Venture v01n04 (1957 07) (jodyanimator)

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NEWMENDOUS

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Not So Great an Enemy O^oveleO

JAMES E. GUNN

4

And Then She Found Him

PAUL JANVIER

45

Aces Loaded Theodore r. cogswell

62

On Hand . . , Offhand: Books Theodore sturgeon

77

The Keeper Cohort novelet)

H. BEAM PIPER

80

The Education of Tigress Macardle

C, M. KORNBLUTH

101

Seat of Judgment

LESTER DEL REY

110

The Harvest

TOM GODWIN

128

Venturings

THE EDITOR

131

Cover hy Ed Emskf illustrating “Aces Loaded
Interior illustrations by John Giunta and Cindy Smith

Joseph W. Eerman, publisher Robert P. Mills, editor

V«nfur» Sci*nc« FicHon A4ogazin«« Vol. f No. 4, Whole No. 4, JOLI, 1957. PuS/ished
monfh/y by fonhjty House, Ine., a1 3S< a copy. subserlpiiofi S4.00 in U.S.A.

and potMtuonj, Canada and fht ^an Amahcan Unian; S5.00 in oil ofher countries,
rubliealien office, Concord, N.H. fdilariai and Goncfoi offices, 527 Madison Are., New
York 22, N.Y. Entered as second class matter at the Post Office ot Concord, N.H., under
the act of March 3, 7579. O I9S7, by Fantasy House, Ine. All rights reserved. Prelection
secured under the International Copyright Convention and the Pan American Convention.
Printed in U4.A.

Andiany 5auch«r. Advisory Sditor Gloria Levitas, Managing Editor

Conttanca Oi ftianzo, Exocutrva Editeriaf Saeratarjr Narmo L*Wna« SditoriaJ Assistant

George Sa7#*r, Art Dirocfor

Not So Great an Enemy

by JAMES E. GUNN

Medic Ben Grayle saf h the dark silence and rubbed bis bead
where he'd been slugged. He thought of the dying man in the
City who had no right to a doctor ... of the old man in the
Hospital who bad paid a qoorfer of a million dollars for a
young man's heart and five years of life ... of fhe blind girl
whose body might be forfeit. And be thought of death, the enemy.

He woke to pain. It was a
sharp, stabbing sensation in tlie pit
of his stomach. It pulled his knees
up toward his chest and contorted
his gaunt, yellowed face with an
involuntary grimace that creasal
the skin along familiar lines like
parchment folded and refolded.

The pain stabbed again. He
grunted; his body jerked. Slowly
it ebbed, flood waters retreating,
leaving its detritus of exacerbated
nerve endings like a promise of re-
turn. "Coke!"' shouted tlie man.

The word echoed around the
big room on the twenty-ninth floor,
bounded off tall ceilings and wood-
paneled walls. There was no an-
swer. "Coke!" he screamed. "Coke!
Coke! CokeT

Footsteps pattered distantly,
clapped against marble floors, muf-
fled themselves in carpeting. They
stopped beside the broad, silken

bed. “Yes, boss?" The voice cringed.
The man cringed, too. It made him
even shorter. -The little eyes waver-
ing in tlie monkey face refused to
focus on anything.

The sick man writhed on the bed.
"The medicine!” he gasped.

Coke snatched up the brown bot-
tle from the gray metal nighlstand
and shook out tliree pills into a
trembling hand. The sick man
grabbed them greedily, ix>pped
them into his mouth. Into his hand
Coke put a glass of water he had
poured from a silver pitcher. The
sick maJi drank convulsively.

In a few minutes die sick man
was sitting up. lie hugged his knees
to his chest and breadied in ex-
hausted pantings. ‘Tm sick, Coke,"
he moaned. ‘Tve got to have a doc-
tor. I’m going to die. Coke.” There
W'as an overwhelming horror in his
voice. "Call the doctor!”

6

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“I can’t/ Coke squeaked. “Don’t
you remember?”

The sick man frowned as if he
were trying to fathom Coke’s hesi-
tation, and then his face writhed
and his left hand swung out vi-
ciously. It caught Coke across the
mouth. Coke’s head jerked, and he
pressed back into tlie comer and
crouched there, watching the sick
man with a rodent’s wary eyes.

“Be here!” the sick man snarled.
“Don’t make me call you!” He for-
got Coke. His chin dropped, and
he hammered futilely against the
bed with a knotted list. "Damn!”
he sobbed.

In diat position, he sat, graven,
for minutes. Coke huddled in the
comer, unmoving, watchful. At
last the sick man straightened,
threw back the heavy comforter,
and stood up. He walked painfully
to the curtained windows. As he
walked he whimpered, "I’m sick.
I’m going to die.”

He tugged on a thick, velvet
cord; the curtains whispered apart.
Sunlight flooded into the room,
spilled over the sick man; it turned
his scarlet pajamas into flame, his
face into dough.

“It’s a terrible thing,” said tlie
sick man, “when a dying man can't
get a doctor. I need treatment for
this pain, Coke. I can’t stand it any
longer.”

Coke watched; his eyes never
left the tall, thin man who stood in
the simlight and stared blindly out
over the city.

“Get me a doctor. Coke,” the sick
man said. “Find one out on call,
and bring him here. I don’t care
how you do it. Just get him.”

Coke scuttled out of the room,
grayly, like a mouse. The sick man
stared out of the window, not hear-
ing him go.

From here the ruins were not so
apparent — the city looked almost
as it had fifty years ago. But if a
man looked closely he could see the
holes in the roofs, the places where
the porcelain false fronts had fallen
and the brick behind had crumbled
and toppled into the streets.

Twelfth Street was blocked com-
pletely. Mounds of rubble made
many others impassable. The hand
of Time is not as swift as that of
man, but it is inexorable.

The distant, arrowing sweep of
Southwest Trafficway drew the eye
like movement, bright througli the
drabness of decay. Medical Center
was out of sight behind tlie rising
ground to the south, but the com-
plex, walled entity on Hospital
Hill was brilliant in the sunlight.

It was an island rising out of a
stinking sea, an enclave of life with-
in the dying city.

Distantly the air conditioner
muttered, purifying the air.

The sick man stared out the win-
dow at the smog thrusting up the
streets from the river, climbing to-
ward the twenty-block-square for-
tress on Hospital Hill. But the dis-
ease-bearing tendrils would never
infiltrate those walls.

7

Not So Great an Enemy

“Damn them!” tlie sick man
whimpered. “Damn them!”

Ben Grayle, seventh-year medic,
peered out the slit-windows of the
one-man ambulance into the sooty
night. The misting rain was mixed
with smog now. It was a live thing,
shifting eternally, against which
the fog lamp battered helplessly.

Suddenly the purr of the air-con-
ditioner was loud. Grayle frowned
worriedly for fear that it would quit
and leave him defenseless. It would
be almost as bad as stepping out
into the night, like breathing that
semi-liquid death. He shuddered.

He recognized it for what it was
— a trick of the subconscious, the
reassurance he needed that the vital
purification was going on perfectly.

Ever since he had left the traf-
ficway witli its lights and its oc-
casional patrols, he had been lost
and uneasy. Even the trafficway
wasn't safe any more. A twenty-
millimeter shell caroming from the
ambulance’s armored roof had made
a fearful din.

Where had the pohce been then?

The maps that listed Truman
Road as “passable” were out of date.
This had to be Truman Road; it
was too wide to be anything else.
But he had only a vague notion
how far east he had come. On either
side of tlie street was darkness; pos-
sibly it was a shade denser on the
right.

Unless that was a strip razed by
wind, fire, or d^mamite, it was a

park. He visualized the city map.
It was either The Parade or The
Grove.

Something exploded under the
front wheel. The ambulanceleaped,
shuddering, into the air. It came
down hard. Before the shocks ab-
sorbed it, the automatic Chaufieur
lost control and the ambulance
slewed toward the left.

Grayle grabbed the emergency
wheel and overrode the Chauffeur,
turning the ambulance in the direc-
tion of the skid. The sound of
screaming tires came like the muf-
fled wail of a parturient woman.

Lights loomed up unexpectedly,
dim-red lanterns in the night, sil-
most invisible in the swirling smog.
They were about waist high to a
man standing in the street.

Grayle twisted the wheel to the
right this time, sharp, clutched his
seat with taut legs as the ambulance
took the curb, fought the crazy tilt
as it lit in mud and skidded again.
It was a park, all right. He raced
through it, fighting desperately for
control, dodging trees and bent tel-
ephone poles with dieir tangles of
old webs, until he jogged the am-
bulance back into the street. He
was blocks past the beginning of
the madness. He pulled up.

In the ambulance balanced at
the side of the road, Grayle sat and
sweated. He rubbed the back of a
hand across his forehead and fought
the twitching of nerves across his
shoulders.

Damn the city I he thought sav-

8

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

agely. Damn the street department!
Damn the sadist Resident who had
sent him out on a night like this,
emergency call or not.

But it was nobody’s fault.

The night traveler went at his
own risk. There weren't enough of
them to waste scarce taxes on street
repairs, and it was no trick to avoid
the holes, ruts, and uprooted
chunks of concrete by daylight.

One thing they could do, he
thought rebelliously. They could
code the streets with radioactives
for the Chauffeur. The damn thing
went crazy every time he hit a hole.
The mechanics did their best, but
it was shoddy equipment they re-
ceived.

What’s happened, he wondered
angrily, to the workman’s pride in
his product? Even the surgical ma-
chines — why a surgeon who used
one without watching it rebuilt was
wide open for a malpractice suit.

He thought back over the near-
accident, blurred then into a kalei-
doscope of action but available for
more leisurely examination now.
That hadn’t felt so much like a
hole. It had felt more like a land-
mine. And those lanterns could
have been sitting on a barricade
which sheltered a band of hijack-
ers.

Gra)de shivered and stepped on
the accelerator and wished fervent-
ly that he were back at the Center,
working out his shift in the anti-
septic, bulletproof comfort of the
emergency ward.

Inside the walls of the hospital,
the practice of medicine was a pure
and wonderful thing. Even ambu-
lance calls in the country^ though
distracting, were not altogether un-
settling — country people were re-
spectable members of society, and
had a proper regard for the miracles
of modern medicine. The City was
something else again. Cities were
the nation’s slums, and slums are
inhabited largely, Grayle thought
cynically, by people without ideals
or ambition — scoffers and scum.
He didn’t like this new duty he’d
been put on.

But he’d have to learn to accept
it. A doctor’s responsibility, he re-
membered, was to life, wherever
it was flickering or failing. But only,
of course, when the ovraer of the
life thought enough of it to pay for
its preserving.

The Chauffeur seemed to have
settled down again. Grayle eased
the ambulance back into the mid-
dle of the road and relaxed his
grip on the wheel. Without mean-
ing to, he let his mind go back to
the hospital, to the pure joy of
learning to be a great surgeon. Like
Dr. Cassner, whom he’d n^atched
the other day in a beautiful three-
hour display of microsurgical virtu-
osity. , . .

It had begun as an ordinary ar-
terial resection and transplant. The
overhead, shadowless light was
searching and cold on the draped
body of the old man. The air con-
ditioners murmured persistently.

9

Not So Great an Enemy

but sweat beaded Cassner’s broad
forehead and trickled down beneath
his mask before the nurse could
mop it away with sterile cotton.

But Cassner’s hands never
stopped. Disembodied, alive, his
fingers manipulated the delicate
controls of the surgical machine
with a sureness, a dexterity im-
matched in this part of the coun-
try, perhaps anywhere. Genius is
incomparable.

Grayle had watched with a hyp-
notic fascination that made time
meaningless. The scalpels sliced
through the skin with unerring pre-
cision, laying bare the swollen, old
arteries; deft metal fingers tied them
off, snipped them in two, accepted
a lyophilized transplant, and
grafted the healthy young artery to
the stump of the old; the suture
machine moved swifdy after, dust-
ing the exposed area with antibiot-
ics, clamping together the edges of
the incision. . . .

Cassner’s ej'es flicked from the
patient on the operating table to the
physiological monitor on the wall
behind it, absorbing at a single
glance the composite picture of the
patient’s condition: blood pressure,
heartbeat, respiration. . . .

He saw the danger first. The op-
eration was, comparatively, a
speedy thing, but there were disad-
vantages. The area involved was
large, and even the chlorpromazine-
promethazine-Dolosal cocktail and
die chilling could not avoid shock
entirely. And the heart was old.

It was impossible to transfer the
instruments to the new area swifdy
enough. Cassner took the scalpel in
his ovm fingers and opened up the
chest cavity with a long, sure stroke,
“Heart machine,” he said in his
quick, high voice to no one in par-
ticular.

It was pumping within thirty
seconds, its tubes tied to the aorta
and the left atrium. Two minutes
later a new heart, still palpitating,
was in the old chest; Cassner
grafted the arteries and veins to it.
Ten minutes after the monitor had
signaled the heart stoppage, Cass-
ner pulled out the old heart and
held, it in his hand, a dead thing
of worn-out muscle. He motioned
wearily for his first assistant to in-
ject the digitalis.

As the chest cavity was closed,
the new heart began squeezing
powerfully, forcing the blood
through the arteries.

Cassner would have had a good
excuse for turning the more rou-
tine job over to the assistant, but
he completed the arterial transplant
before he turned away toward the
dressing room.

That, Grayle thought, was what
medicine was really aU about. . . .

The smog shifted, and he saw a
light glimmering far down the
street like something lost in the
night.

Grayle coasted past the cafe. In-
side was a waiter behind a long
counter and a single customer.
Grayle swung the ambulance

10

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

around the corner into a puddle of
darkness.

Before he opened the door, he
broke open a fresh filter packet and
slipped the filters into his nostrils,
taking time to see that they were a
good fit. He slipped the needle gun
out of the holster on the ambulance
door.

The smog swirled around him,
clutching, trying to insinuate its
deadly tendrils down into his lungs.
Boyd was right: We swim in a sea
of carcinogens. But you had to do
your best for those who had to live
in die sea.

The rain had almost stopped,
but Grayle pulled his coat tight at
the collar — even a fiash of his white
jacket was dangerous here. There
was always a chance of running
into hijackers or Antivivs or just
an ordinary citizen with a grudge.

The street number was long gone
from above the door. Grayle pushed
his way through the airlock and into
the brightness.

He noticed the warmth first.
Then he heard the asthmatic gasp-
ings of an ancient air conditioner.

Airlock, air conditioner. The pro-
prietor was making a stab at the
necessities of life.

The waiter was a thick-necked
urban with a battered nose and
crumpled ears. He wore a filthy
white jacket in obvious imitation
of a doctor’s uniform.

Grayle tried to control his anger;
commercialism always annoyed
him.

The customer was thin and wea-
sel-faced. Grayle diagnosed him
automatically: Thyroid. Hyperteti’
Sion. He gave the man five years.

“What’s for you?” asked the wait-
er eagerly. “Got a new health-food
menu. Got a new tonic fresh from
the lab: all the known vitamins
plus trace minerals, iron, and a new
secret ingredient in an oral suspen-
sion of medicinal alcohol. You wan-
ta see the lab sheets, analysis, testi-
monials?”

‘TMo,” Grayle began. "What I — ”

“Say now,” said the waiter, his
voice dropping conspiratorially, “I
got some stuff under the counter —
straight Kentucky bourbon, no vita-
mins, no minerals, just plain rot-
gut.”

“All I want to know is the ad-
dress here,” Grayle said impatiently.

The waiter looked at him blank-
ly. Slowly he shook his head'. Maybe
addresses and street numbers didn’t
mean anything now, Grayle
thought. It wasn’t just that, though.
Suspicion was something solid be-
tween them. What set him apart:
his clothing? his speech?

The waiter jerked a thumb back
the way Grayle had come. “That
way,” he said. “That’s Benton.”

“Thanks,” Grayle said coldly. He
turned toward the door, danger at
the back of his neck, prickling. He
went out into the night.

“Pssst!” something hissed behind
him.

Grayle glanced back. It was Thy-
roid, his weasel face screwed up in-

11

Not So Great an Enemy

gratiatingly. Grayle stopped. The
man sneaked close, glancing behind
him. "Where you going? I can may-
be tell you.”

Grayle hesitated. “Tenth,” he
said. "Thirty-four hundred block.”

'Two blocks east, turn left. It's
straight north,” the man whispered
huskily. Grayle muttered his thanks
and turned away. He had just no-
ticed that the man had no filters in
his nose; he felt embarrassed and
uncomfortable. "Look!” the man
said quickly. "Want some penicil-
lin?”

Grayle stood rooted for a mo-
ment, too surprised to act. Then
his right hand went casually into
his pocket to grab the pistol butt
while his left hand pressed two
studs on his belt bucUe. Faintly,
listening for it, he heard the am-
bulance motor rev up. "What's
tliat?” he asked.

"Penicillin,” the shover repeated
urgently. "Hot stuff. Straight from
the lab, and the price is right.”

“How much?”

"A buck per hundred tliousand.
Look!” He stuck out a grimy hand;
the yellow restaurant light filtered
over it, over the metal-capped am-
pule that nestled in the palm.
"Here's three hundred thousand
units all ready to go to work. Sup-
pose you get an infection tonight.
It can lay you away for good. With
this little ampule here, you catch
it yourself. Three bucks, okay? Save
a day’s work, and you got your
money back.”

Grayle looked curiously at the
10 cc. ampule. He wondered what
was in it. At that price, most like-
ly it was water. A dollar per hun-
dred thousand units was less than
wholesale.

The shover laughed uneasily
when Grayle remained silent.
"Well — ” he pulled his hand back
as if he were going to thrust it
into his pocket and walk away —
"it’s your life. End up in a hos-
pital.”

Grayle listened for the beat of
rotors. The night was silent,
“There’s worse places,” he said.

"Name one,” the shover chal-
lenged, and edged closer. “Tell you
what. I’ll make it two-fifty. I can’t
stay here all night.”

By then the shover was close.
Too close, Grayle thought. He
backed away. The shover grabbed
at the coat to hold him. The coat
fell open.

Grayle damned the fool who had
failed to magnetize the closure
properly. The shover staggered back
from the white jacket and looked
wildly around for help that was un-
available.

Grayle pulled out the pistol.
"That’s far enough,” he said firmly.

The shover came back immedi-
ately, like a ball on a string. “Look,
say. I mean there’s no reason we
can’t do business. I give you the
penicillin, you forget we ever met,
eh?”

"Where did you get it?”

The man shrugged helplessly.

12

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

"You know how it is. Somebody
passes it to me, and how do I
know where it comes from? Stolen
maybe. Diverted at the factory.”

"By Bone's men?”

The shover looked startled. He
glanced apprehensively into the
shadows. "What do you think?
Come on, Medic, give me a break.”
The light came on like a de-
tergent spray, cleansing the dark-
ness. Grayle heard the rotors over-
head and blinked blindly.

“Don’t move,” said a bull voice.
"You’re imder arrest.”

The shover dashed for the dark-
ness. Grayle aimed carefully. The
needle caught him in the back of
the neck, just below the basi-occipi-
tal bone. He took one more step
and cnunpled, half in darkness.

The police sergeant listened to
Grayle’s description of events with
unconcealed impatience. "You
shouldn’ta shot him,” he said.
‘'What's the man done, he should
get shot?”

"Shoving,” Grande said firmly,
counting them off on his fingers
with the muzzle of the needle gun.
“Bribery. Adulterating, too, if you'll
analyze that ampule.”

"That's no proof,” the sergeant
said sourly. "You think we got
nothing better to do than answer
false alarms?”

"Proof?” Gra)'le echoed, scowling
darkly. "What do you need? There’s
my testimony. There's this.” He
pressed the playback button on his
belt buckle.

The voice was rich and cultured,
“Contraindications are known ilo-
tycin sensitivity and — ”

Grayle hit the stud hastily and
reeled off a few feet of tape before
he started it again. “Penicillin,”
said the shover’s husky whisper.
"Hot stuff. Straight from the lab,
and the price is right. . .

When it was finished, Grayle
added his own affidavit, “I, Benja-
min Grayle, seventh-year medic, do
hereby swear by Aesculapius and
Hippocrates that . . ."

The officer’s reluctant confirma-
tion made it legal, and Grayle
dropped the bobbin-sized spool in-
to the officer’s meaty hand. "That
should be plenty. There's your pris-
oner.”

The sho^'er was on his hands and
knees, weaving his head back and
forth like a sleepy elephant.

The sergeant’s voice was heavy.
"You don't have to get tough. I’ll do
my job. Try to understand, though
— a man’s got to live, and these is
hard times. Why that man’s prob-
ably trying to meet payments on a
medical contract!”

“That’s your problem, Sergeant.
It’s rats like that who are slashing
the throats of the medical profes-
sion. If drugs and antibiotics circu-
late without supervision, the life-
span will plummet to seventy or
lower. We have enough trouble
with antibiotic sensitivity and re-
sistant bacteria strains without
this.”

Grayle looked down again at

13

Not So Great an Enemy

the shover. He was sitting up, be-
wildered. He rubbed the back of
his neck and pulled his hand aw'aj’
to stare at it. “I ain’t dead,” he
said.

“My business is saving life, not
taking it,” Grayle said harshly.

The shover looked up at the voice
and snarled. “You! You lousy body
snatcher! Quack! You with your
noble airs, your self-sacrifice. You
ain’t gonna get away widi this!
Hear me? John Bone’ll take care of
you, butcher!”

“Here, now!” the sergeant broke
in sharply, hauling the shover to
his feet. “That’s enough out of you.”

But his hands were surprisingly
gentle. Grayle’s lips twisted wr>iy
as he turned towards the ambu-
lance. The shover was treated with
more respect than the medic.

Over the muffled throb of the
helicopter’s rotors, the shover
shouted at him, “You and your
kind — you’re responsible for all
this!”

The searchlight swept along the
front of the porch roof and picked
out two numbers hanging rusty
and askew. Luckily thej' were the
last two.

The house stood beside a vacant
lot crammed with the disintegrat-
ing pipe, machinery, and derrick of
a gas^rilling outfit. At one time
the yard had been paved. Now it
was little better than powder}' grav-
el as Grayle drove up to the front
steps.

He turned off the lights and sat
in the darkness staring up at the
place. It was two stories and an
attic. An ancient porch reached
across the front. The windows
stared dark and blind into the
night.

Had the Resident made a mis-
take? It would be typical.

Then he saw a dim flicker be-
hind the west, second-floor window.

The light built into the black
bag splashed against the old door.
Grayle knocked. There was no an-
swer. The only sound was the com-
forting vibration of the ambulance
motor.

He tried the antique brass han-
dle. The door swung open. He
pulled out tlie needle gun and en-
tered cautiously. To the right an
archway had been boarded off with
worm-eaten plywood. Ahead was a
flight of stairs.

At the head of die stairs was a
multitude of doors. Grayle turned
right. The door was locked. It rat-
tled under his hand.

He listened uneasily to the noises
of the house. It creaked and
squeaked and stirred as if it had
acquired a life of its own over the
centuries. His shoulders twitched.

The door opened.

The light from the black bag
spilled over the girl like quicksilver,
stared into it, unblinking. Grayle
stared back. She w'as short, not
taller than five-five. Her dark hair
would have been very long, he
thought, if it had been allowed to

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

14

fall free, but it was braided and
wound around Her head like a
coronet.

Her face was delicate and slen-
der, the skin very white, the fea-
tures regular. Her dress was yellow
and flowing, belted in to a small
waist; it was impractical and com-
pletely imlike the straight, narrow
fashions women were wearing these
days.

But there was something sug-
gestive about the hint of figure be-
neath the cloth and the bare, white
feet. His pulse climbed ten beats
per minute.

Only then did he notice that she
was blind. Her corneas were cloudy,
opaque, darkening the pale blue of
her eyes.

“Are you the medic?” Her voice
was low and gentle.

‘Tes.”

“Come in before you arouse our
roomers. They might be danger-
ous.”

As the girl bolted the door be-
hind him, Grayle surveyed the
room. Once it had been a bedroom
and fairly large. Now it was a one-
room apartment containing two
chairs, a gas burner, an upended
crate serving as a table for a smok-
ing kerosene lamp, and a cot made
of wood and canvas.

On the cot was a middle-aged
man, sixtyish, his eyelids closed, his
breathing noisy in die bare room.

"Philip Shoemaker?” Grayle
asked.

‘Tes,” the girl said.

He noticed her eyes again. In the
sun they would be the color of wild
hyacinth. “Daughter?”

“No relation.”

‘What are you doing here?”

“He's sick,” she said simply.

Grayle studied her face. It held
much peace and calmness, but it
told him nothing. He adjusted the
lamp and turned to Shoemaker. He
was in a dangerous condition.

As he sat down on the chair be-
side the cot, he unlocked his black
bag. Quickly, without wasted mo- '
tions, he brought out a handful of
instruments, trailing their wires.
One small pickup went over the
man’s heart; anodier was fastened
to his wrist, a diird to the palm.

He wrapped a sphygmomanometer
band around the bicep and watched
it grow taut, slipped a mouthpiece
between pale lips, fitted something
like a skullcap to die head. . . .

When he was finished, Shoe-
maker was a fly caught in a web,
transmitting feeble impulses to the
spider lurking in the bag. This spi-
der, though, was linked to the am-
bulance below by intangible lines,
and together they would pour life
back into the fly, not suck it away.

It took one minute and twenty-
three seconds. During the next sec-
ond, Grayle noticed the adhesive
tape on the patient’s forearm. He
frowned and tore it loose. Beneath
it was a compress dark with blood
and a small, welling slit in the
median-basilic vein.

“Who's been with this man?”

15

Not So Great an Enemy

“Me,” the girl said clearly. One
hand was resting gently on die box
that held the lamp.

Beneath the head of the cot was
a quart jar. In it was a pint of
blood, clotting now but still faintly
warm. Grayle put it down slowly.
“Why did you perform a phlebot-
omy on this man?”

"There was no other way to save
his life,” she said gently.

"This isn’t tlie dark ages,” Grayle
said. “You might have killed him.”
“The way I heard it, Medic,”
she told him softly, "in some cases
blood-letting is effective when
nothing else will work — cerebral
hemorrhage, for instance. It lowers
die blood pressure temporarily and
gives the blood in the ruptured ves-
sel a chance to clot.”

Involuntarily, Grayle glanced in-
to the bag. From the bottom, the
diagnosis was shining up fiuores-
cendy. It was cerebral hemorrhage,
all right, and the prognosis was
hopeful. The hemorrhage had
stopped.

He took a compress out of a
pocket in the bag, pulled the tab,
and watched die wrapper disinte-
grate. He pressed it firmly over the
cut. It clung to the skin as he took
his hand away.

“There are laws against practic-
ing medidne without a license,” he
said slowly. “I’ll have to report
this.”

“Should I have let him die?”
“There are doctors to treat him.”
“He called one. It took you an

hour and a half to get here. If I had
waited, he’d have died.”

It wasn’t as if the girl were ar-
guing with him, Grayle thought. It
was more like explanation, like an
attempt to make him understand.
“I came as fast as I could. It’s no
joke to find a place like this at
night.”

‘Tm not criticizing.” She put
her band back vmtii she felt the
chair behind her and sank down
into it, lighdy, gracefully, and
folded her white hands in her lap.
“You asked me why I bled him. I
told you.”

Grayle was silent. The girl’s logic
was impeccable, but she was wrong
all the same. There weren’t any
reasonable exaises for breaking the
law. The practice of medicine had
to be the monopoly of men who
were carefully, painfully trained
for it and indoctrinated in the an-
cient ethics. No one else could be
permitted to tamper with the most
sacred thing in the world.

She rose and walked toward him
confidently, put a hand on his
shoulder, and leaned past him to
touch Shoemaker's forehead. 'Tes,”
she said, and her voice was firm
with an unusual certainty. “He’ll
get well now. He’s a good man. We
mustn’t let him die.”

The girl’s nearness was a wann
fragrance, stirring, provocative.
Grayle felt his blood pressure
mount. Why not? he thought^ she’s
only an urban. But he couldn’t,
and it wasn’t just a medic’s honor

16

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

or even, perhaps, that she was
blind.

He didn’t move, but she drew
away, took back her hand, as if she
sensed the emotions fermenting in-
side him.

"IVe got to get him to the hospi-
tal,” Grayle said. “Besides the hem-
orrhage, there’ll be infection.”

“I scrubbed the arm with soap
and then with alcohol,” she said.
“I sterilized the knife in the lamp
flame and scorched the bandage
over the lamp chimney.”

Her fingers looked blistered. “You
were lucky,” the medic said coldly.
“Next time someone will die.”

She turned her face toward his
voice. Grayle found the movement
strangely appealing. “What can you
do when they need you?”

It was too much like a physi-
cian’s response to the world’s plea
for help. A doctor had a right to
respond to the plea; she didn’t. He
turned brusquely back to Shoe-
maker and began stripping off the
instruments and stowing them
away. ‘TU have to carry him down
to the ambulance. Can you carry
the bag for me to light the way?”
“You mustn’t take him. He has-
n’t kept up payments on his con-
tract. You know what they'll do.”
Grayle stopped in the act of
snapping the bag shut. He was
shocked. “If he’s a defaulter,” he
began, his voice trembling on the
verge of anger.

"What would you do,” she asked
quietly, “if you were dying and

alone? Wouldn’t you call for help?
Any help? Would you stop to weigh
legalities? He had a contract once,
and the payments ruined him, cost
him his home in the country, drove
him here to the sustenance life. But
when he was sick, he turned to his
old faith, as a dying Catholic calls
for his priest."

Grayle recoiled from the com-
parison. “And he deprived several
people of vital, lawful attention,”
he said bitingly. “The chances are
that he traded his life for that of
someone else. That's why the laws
were passed. If Shoemaker can’t
pay, he ought to be repossessed.”
He stooped toward the man.

She pulled him back with sur-
prising strength. “Surely you’ve got
enough blood, enough organs.
They’ll kill him.”

“There’s never enough,” Grayle
said. “And there's research, after
that.” He put an impatient hand
on her shoulder to push her aside.
Under the dress material, the flesh
felt warm and soft. “You must be an
Antiviv or you wouldn’t call it kill-
ing.”

“I am, hut that’s only part of it.
I’m asking for him, because he’s
worth saving. Are you so inflexi-
ble, so perfect, that you can’t —
forget?”

He stopped pushing, looked
down at his hand for a moment,
and let it drop. It wasn’t defeat —
not exactly. He merely refused to
fight with the girl for the man’s
body.

17

Not So Great an Enemy

“All right,” he said.

He picked up the black bag with
a snap that locked it shut and start-
ed toward the door.

“Wait!” she said.

He looked back at her as she
moved toward him blindly, her
hand outstretched until her ^gers
touched the arm of his coat, “I
want to thank you,” she said gen-
tly. “I thought there wasn't any
mercy left in the medical profes-
sion.”

For a moment his viscera felt
cold, anesthetized, and then the ice
melted in a surge of anger. He did-
n’t want any credit for something
he wasn’t going to do. “Don’t mis-
understand me,” he said blimtly.
“I’m going to turn in his name to
the Agency. I’m going to report you,
too. That’s my duty.”

Her hand fell to her side in a
gesture of apology, for her own mis-
take and perhaps also for the na-
ture of humanity. "We do what we
must.”

She moved forward past him, un-
bolted the door, and turned toward
him, her back against the door. “I
don’t think you’re as hard as you
pretend to be.”

That stopped him. He wasn’t
hard, incapable of understanding
or sympathy. Those who must live
in the midst of sickness and death,
upon whose skill and judgment rest
health and life, can’t afford to be
touched by the drama, the human
values of every situation. It would
be unendurable.

"There’s an old man do\vnstairs
who needs help,” she said hesitant-
ly. “Would you see him?”

“Out of the question,” he
snapped angrily.

Her head lifted for a moment.
That was pride, he thought. But
then it nodded resignedly. “I’m sor-
ry,” she said softly.

The light was dangerous, she
said, and offered to lead him. Her
hand was warm and firm and con-
fident. Three-fourths of the way
down, the stairs hesitated at a land-
ing, and turned left to reach tlie
hall. A door opened in the darkness
to the right of the landing.

Grayle tore his hand loose and
stuck it into his coat pocket onto
the solid reassurance of the needle
gun.

Glimmering whitely in the dark
rectangle of the door was a ghost of
a face. “Leah?” it said. It was a
girl's voice. “I thought it was you.
Give me your hand. I thought I
would never get through the
night. . . .”

“There now,” said Leah. She put
out a hand toward the face. "You’re
going to be all right.”

With a sudden flash of irrita-
tion, Grayle snapped on the light
of the black bag. It hit the girl like
a blow; she recoiled, her arms over
her eyes, moaning.

Grayle flicked off the light. He
had seen enough. The girl in her
thin, mended nightdress was a bun-
dle of bones wrapped tautly in pale
skin. Except for two feverish spots

18

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

of color in her cheeks, her face was
dead white.

She was dying of tuberculosis.

Tuberczilosis. Today! Why do
they do it!

“Go up and stay "with Phil,” Leah
said. “He needs you. He’s had a
stroke, but he’s better now.”

“All right, Leah,” the girl said.
She slipped past them silently and
climbed the stairs.

“What's the matter with them?”
Grayle’s voice was strained and puz-
zled. “Tuberculosis is no problem.
We can cure it easily. Why do they
let themselves die?”

She stopped in front of the
worm-eaten plywood partition and
raised her face toward him. “Be-
cause it’s cheaper. It’s all they can
afford.”

“Cheaper to die?” Grayle ex-
claimed incredulously. ‘What kind
of economy is that?”

“The only kind of economy they
know. The only kind the hospitals
will let them practice. You've made
good health too expensive. The way
she is now, she needs a few months
of bedrest, a hundred grams of di-
hydrostreptomycin, a thousand
grams of PAS, perhaps some col-
lapsed lung therapy, some rib re-
sections. That girl has never seen
more than fifty dollars all at once.
If she lived to be a hundred she
couldn’t save half the money nec-
essary for the treatment. She’s got
children to support. She can’t stop
working for a day, much less
months — ”

"There are clinical contracts,”
Grayle said impatiently.

“They don’t cover the kind of
treatment she needs,” Leah said
wistfuUy. A door opened behind
her. “Goodnight, Medic.” Then she
was gone.

That wasn’t right, Grayle
thought as he turned toward Ae
front door. That wasn’t the way it
should be. But was it the way it
was?

He turned back impetuously,
words pouring to his lips like; If
there isn't enough to go around,
who are you going to treat — the
indigent or the prosyierous, the hot-'
tomless pits or those who can fi-
nance the future, with more medi-
cine, more health for everyone}

But the words died on his lips.
The panel in the partition had come
ajar. In the room behind it was a
battered, antique aluminum chaise
longue — Twentietli Century Mod-
ern. An old man was propped up-
right in it, so straight and still that
Grayk thought for a moment that
he was dead.

He was a very old man — Grayle
thought that he had never seen a
man as old, although geriatrics was
one of Medical Center’s leading
specialties. His hair was pure white
and thick; his face was seamed like
old leather, sagging away from
strong facial bones as if it were
eager to be gone.

Beside the chair Leah had sunk
to her knees. She had one of his
bony hands in hers, pressed to her

19

Noi So Great an Enemy

check: her eyelids closed over their
clouded corneas.

There was something familiar
about that old face, something
Grayie couldn't isolate, pin down.
He noticed with a shock that the
ol<^ man’s eyes were open now.

“Come in, Medic,” the old man
whispered.

Leah’s face came up, her sight-
less eyes open; she turned toward
him. She smiled, too. It was a
warming thing, like sunlighL

“You came back to help,” Leah
said.

Gravle shook his head slowdy and
then remembered that she couldn’t
see. “There's nothing I can do.”
“There’s nothing anyone can do,”
the old man w’hispered. “Even with-
out your gadgets. Medic, you know
what’s wrong with me. I’m one hun-
dred and twenty-five years old. You
could give me a ne^v heart from
some unfortunate defaulter, but my
arteries would still be thickened
with arteriosclerosis. And if you re-
placed those without killing me, I
would sdll have a fibrotic liver,
scarred lungs, senile ductless
glands, probably a few carcinomas.
And even if you gave me a new
body, you still couldn’t help me,
because down deep, where your
knives can't reach and your instru-
ments can’t measure, is the me that
is old beyond repair.”

“I can't stand it, Russ,” Leah
moaned, pressing her forehead
against the old man’s hand.

When Leah turned her face back

toward Grayie, he was shocked to
see tears trickling from the blind
eyes. “Can’t you do something?” she
demanded fiercely.

“Medicine can’t give anyone the
will to live.”

Leah stood up angrily. “There
must be something you can do —
with aU your magnificent knowl-
edge, all the expensive gadgets we
bought you!”

“There’s the elixir,” he said
thoughtlessly.

Russ smiled again, reminiscent-
ly, perhaps. “Ah, yes — the elixir. I
had almost forgotten. Elixir vitae”

“Would it help?” Leah demand-
ed.

‘Trobably not,” Grayie said firm-
ly. He had said too much already.
Laymen weren’t equipped for med-
ical information; it blurred the
medical picture.

Besides, the elixir was still only
a research phenomenon. The stuff
was a synthesis of a rare blood pro-
tein which had been discovered in
the bloodstreams of no more than
a handful of persons in the whole
world. This protein, this immunity
factor, seemed to pass on its im-
munitv' as if death itself were a dis-
ease. But as yet it could not be
duplicated in the laboratory, and
the supply was hardly enou^ for
research purposes.

"A tremendously complicated
process,” he said, “And not avail-
able to the public.” He turned ac-
cusingly toward Russ. "I can’t un-
derstand w’hy you didn’t have new

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

20

corneas grafted onto her eyes.”
"I couldn’t take the sight of any-
one else,” Leah said softly.

'There’s accidental deaths,”
Grayle pointed out.

“How are you going to difEer-
entiate? No, if it’s wrong, it’s wrong
for every case.”

“Don’t you want her to see?”
Grayle demanded of Russ.

“If wanting were enough,” the
old man whispered, “she would
have had my eyes many years ago.
But there’s ie expense, my boy. It
all comes back to that.”

“Stupidity!” Grayle snorted and
turned to leave.

“Wait, boy,” Russ whispered.
“Come here a moment.”

Grayle turned and walked to the
old man’s chair, looked down at
Leah and back to Russ. The old
man held out his hand, palm up.
Automatically, Grayle put out his
hand to meet it, let his hand rest
upon it. As the hands met, Grayle
felt a curious sensation, almost elec-
trical, as if something had stimu-
lated a nerve into sending a mes-
sage up his arm to his brain and
carrying an answer back.

Russ’s hand dropped back limp-
ly. He lowered his head wearily
against the back of the chaise
longue, his eyes closed. “A good
man, Leah, troubled but sincere.
We might do worse.”

“No,” Leah said firmly, "he must
not come here again.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Grayle
said.

"Some empty time,” Russ said
distantly, “you might think of this,
boy — a conclusion I reached many
years ago: There are too many doc-
tors and not enough healers."

Leah rose gracefully from the
floor. “I’ll see you to the door.”

Her unconscious use of the
phrase brought a lump of pity into
Grayle's throat. It was tragedy be-
cause she was beautiful — and
peacefully beautiful inside. Report-
ing her was going to be painful.

He wondered how his hand had
felt to her; how had she known
him: hot, sweaty, nervous?

He paused at the outside door,
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help yoiu:
grandfather.”

“He’s my father. I was bom the
year he was one hundred. He wasn’t
old. He was middle-aged, everyone
thought. It’s only these last few
months he’s grown old. I think it's
a surrender we make when we grow
very tired.”

“How do you live — with him
sick and . , . ?”

"And me blind?” she supplied.
“People are generous.”

“Why?”

‘They’re grateful, I suppose. For
die times when we can help them.
I collect old remedies from grand-
mothers and make them up; I brew
ptisans; I’m a midwife when I’m
needed; I sit up with the sick, help
those I can and bury those I can’t.
You can report this, too, if you
wish.”

“I see,” Grayle said, turning

Noi So Great an Enemy

away and swinging back, irresolute.
“Your father — I’ve seen him some-
where. What’s his name?”

“He lost it more than fifty years
ago. Here in the city, people call
him Healer." She held out her hand
toward him. Grayle took it reluc-
tantly, thinking ^at this was the
end of it. The hand was warm; his
hand remembered the warmth. It
would be a good hand to hold if
you were sick, he thought.

“Good-by, Medic,” she said so-
berly. “I like you. You’re human.
So few of them are. But don’t come
back. It wouldn’t be good for any
of us.”

Grayle cleared his throat noisily.
"I said I wouldn’t,” he said; even
to him it sounded petulant and
childish. “Good-by.”

She stood in (tie doorway, as he
turned, shifted the bag into his right
hand, and picked his way down the
porch steps.

A man was l>ing almost under
the front wheel of the ambulance.
Beside him, on the broken pave-
ment, was a crowbar. Grayle rolled
the man over. His eyes were closed,
but he was breathing easily. He had
got too close and the supersonics
shield had knocked him out.

Grayle knew he should call the
police about this, too, but he felt
too tired for another battle. They
would only turn the man loose.

He puBed the body out of the
path of the wheels and opened the
ambulance door. There was a whis-
per of movement behind him.

21

“Medic!” Leah screamed. Her
voice was distant and frightened.

Grayle started to turn, but it was
too late. The night came down and
covered him.

He opened his eyes to darkness,
and the thought was instantaneous:
This is what it is to he blind. This
is what Leak knows always.

And he wondered if he were
blind.

His head throbbed excruciating-
ly. There was an eggsized lump on
the back of it, where someone had
hit him. The hair w-as matted with
dried blood. He winced as his fin-
gers explored the depth of the cut,
but it wasn’t too bad. He decided
that there wasn’t any concussion.

He didn’t feel blind. It was likely
that he was in a lightless room.

He had a faded, uncertain mem-
ory — as of something lost in child-
hood mists — of a wild ride through
city streets, of being carried — up
steps, down dark halls.

Someone had said something.
"He’s coming around. Shall I tap
him again?”

"Never mind. Just roll him out
until we need him.”

Thump! Blackness again.

There was concrete under him,
cold and hard. He got to his feet,
feeling shaky, aching all over, not
just his head. He took a cautious
step forw'ard and another, holding
one hand straight out in front, fin-
gers extended, the other arm curled
protectively over his face.

22

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

At the fifth step, his fingers
touched. It was a vertical surface.
Concrete again. A wall.

He turned and moved along the
wall to a comer and along a sec-
ond wall that was shorter and had
a door in it. The door was solid
metal; it had a handle, but the han-
dle wouldn’t turn. The other walls
were unbroken. When he had fin-
ished the circuit, he had a mental
picture of a windowless room about
fifteen feet long by nine feet wide.

He sat down and rested.

Somebody had boobytrapped
him, knocked him out, brought him
to this concrete box, locked him in.
Leah?

Her face floated up in front of
his eyes, almost effortlessly because
there were no distractions. He saw
her face, gentle, peaceful, blind.
No, it hadn’t been Leah. Not even
to save herself or Shoemaker. Not
even though she was an Anti\dv.

There was only one person it
could have been — the man he had
pulled from under the wheels. He
must have crept in close to the am-
bulance, so slowly that the detec-
tors hadn’t reacted, and faked un-
consciousness. When Grayle had
come, the shield had clicked off,
and the man had been released to
club him. A crowbar might make a
wound like that.

Who was he? Hijacker?

Maybe, but why had he both-
ered to bring along the medic if it
was the drugs and the instruments
he wanted. Tire only reason Grayle

could think of was Illegal treatment.
Somebody wanted treatment he
wasn't entitled to. He or she was
in for a disappointment.

Grayle went tlirough his pockets.
Futilely. There was nothing in the
coat or the jacket underneath. They
had taken die needle gun.

He had fists. He was big enough;
maybe he was strong enough, too.
He would hide behind the door, he
decided. When it opened — it
opened inward — he would be be-
hind it. He would have a good
chance of taking the hijackers by
surprise.

Meanwhile, he sat in the dark
silence, remembering the dream he
had wakened from. It had seemed
to him that he was a little boy
again, and his father was talking to
him in the grown-up fashion he af-
fected with his son.

“Ben,” his father said, “there may
be more important things than med-
icine, but you can’t be sure of any
of them.” He put his hand on Ben’s
shoulder. It was heavy and Ben
wanted to shrug it off, but he didn’t
dare.

“It’s different with medicine.
You deal with life, and life is al-
ways important. You’ll feel it every
day, because every day you have a
personal fight with death, you beat
him back a foot, surrender a few
Inches, and come back to the batde.
Because life is sacred, Ben. No
matter how mean it is or crippled,
it’s sacred. That’s what we bow
dowm to, Ben.”

Not So Great an Enemy

23

“I know, Dad,” Grayle said, his
voice high and a little frantic. ‘1
want to be a doctor. I want to — ”

"Then bow down, boy. Bow
downl”

But why should he think of
Leah’s father? Why was the old
man so familiar?

Was it what the dying man had
said: Too many doctors and not
enough healers!

Absurd. It was like so many
meaningless phrases which seem
portentous because of their vague-
ness. It reminded him of arguments
with the other medics.

He remembered standing by the
dormitorj^’s bulletproof window,
staring out at the block of houses
being razed to make room for the
two new wings — geriatrics and the
premature section of obstetrics. It
seemed to him that the twin proc-
esses of destruction and construc-
tion never stopped. How many
square blocks did the Center’s walls
enclose? Forty? Forty-five?

He must have said it aloud, be-
cause Charley Brand answered from
his desk. “Sixty and three-fourths.”
Brand was a strange person, an ac-
cretion of miscellaneous informa-
tion waiting to be mined, a mem-
ory bank asking only the proper
question. But he lacked something;
he was cold and mechanical; he
couldn’t synthesize.

‘Why?” asked Hal Mock.

"No reason,” Grayle said, vague-
ly irritated. "I went on a call a few
days ago — into the city.”

“Got back safe, I see,” Mock said.
“Sometimes I wish something would
happen to a few medics in our class.
Like getting si^k — not seriously,
you imderstand — or breaking a leg.
The school can only graduate so
many, you know. But we’re all so
healthy, so careful. It’s disgusting.”
He brooded over it.

Brand shifted uneasily and
changed the subject. ‘What are you
going to specialize in, Ben? After
you graduate.”

"I don’t know,” Grayle said. "I
haven’t thought about it.”

“How about geriatrics?” Mock
asked slyly. “The incidence of senes-
cence is one hundred percent.
That’s the well that never runs
dry.”

"Until they bring out the elixir in
quantity!”

‘They’ll never do that,” Mock
said shrewdly. “They know which
side of the bread the jam is
on. . . .”

“There’s more to medicine than
money,” he said to Mock.

“Sure,” Mock said, “but economic
facts are basic. Ignore them and
you can’t do an acceptable job at
your profession. Look at the income
tax rate: it starts at fifty percent.
On ten thousand a year, it’s eighty
percent. How are you going to pay
for your bag, your instruments, your
library? You can’t practice medicine
without them. How are you going to
pay your dues in the county medi-
cal societjs in the A.M.A., special
assessments ...?’*

24

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

'‘But why?” Grayle demanded.
“Why are income taxes so high?
Why are instruments so expensive?
Why are a hundred million people
without adequate medical facilities,
condemned to a lingering death in
a sea of carcinogens, unable or un-
willing to pay for what the orators
call ‘the finest flower of medi-
cine?’ ”

“It's the cost of living,” Mock
said, curling his lip. “Whatever you
want, you have to pay for. Haven’t
you figured it out?”

“No,” Grayle said savagely.
“What do you mean?”

Mock glanced cautiously behind
him. “I’m not tliat foolish,” he said
slyly. “You never know who might
be listening. Some medic might
have left his recorder on in his desk
on the off chance of catching some-
body with his ethics down. I’ll say
this, though: We can he too

healthy r

Nuts! Grayle muttered in the
darkness of the concrete cell. He
let himself sink down the wall until
he reached the floor.

They were all wrong. Mock and
Russ and Leah and the rest of them
who hinted at dark things. He had
seen Dr. Cassner refute them bril-
liantly in that heart operation the
other day.

That’s what the scoffers forgot,
Grayle had told Mock — what a man
got for his money: the skill, the
drugs, the instruments. Without
modem medicine the man on the
operating table would have died

twenty years earlier. Now he was
good for five to ten years more.

‘That’s nothing,” Mock said. "I
saw Smith-Johnson save a five-
month fetus. It made me wonder:
why?”

Grayle looked scornful. He knew
why: it was because life was sa-
cred, any life, all life.

“Sometimes in the night,” Mock
said distantly, “I can hear their
voices wading, muffled by the incu-
bators, all the preemies that were
too weak to live, that nature wanted
to be rid of, and we saved — for
blindness and disease and perpetual
care. Oh, Cassner’sgood, but I won-
der: how much did the operation
cost?”

"How should I know?”

"Why don't you find out . . . ?”

Grayle moved restlessly in the
darkness. His hand touched his belt
buckle.

He started and wondered why he
hadn’t thought of it before. He
pushed the alarm button hastily.

It was a chance, and no chance
was worth throwing away. He sup-
posed that the hijackers had turned
off the ambulance motor when they
parked it.

Grayle sank back against the
wall, remembering how he had gone
to the business office and looked up
the old man’s statement. He had
put down a $200,000 depositwhen
he’d entered the hospital. The busi-
ness office had figured it pretty
shrewdly. The final bill was only a
few hundred less.

Not So Great an Enetny 25

He glanced down the *‘Debit" col-
umn with its four and five digit
numbers :

Operating Room $40,000

Well, why not? The heart ma-
chine alone had cost $5,000,000.
Someone had to pay for it.

After that was the room fee, an-
esthesia, laboratory fees. X-ray, tis-
sue exam, EKG — EEC — BMR
fees, drugs and dressings, and most
prominently the prices for new or-
gans and arteries :

New Arteries Cl set) $30,000
New Heart CO $50,000

Some poor devil of a defaulter
had paid up his biU.

Grayle sat in the concrete cell
and told himself that a medic
shouldn’t have to weigh questions
of relative value. So the operation
had cost the old man thirty to for-
ty thousand dollars for each year of
life it promised him. It was worth
it — from the old man's viewq)oint.
Was there another viewpoint? Was
someone else footing the bill?

Society, maybe. Was it worth it
to society? Maybe not. The old man
was a consumer now, eating up and
using up what he had been smart
enough or strong enough or ruthless
enough to have produced when he
was younger.

So it w'asn't worth it to society!

That was a brutal, inhuman
viewpoint. That was the reason no-
body wanted society to be the judge
of what was worthwhile. Medicine

had been fighting that possibility
for centuries; on that point the
A.M.A. was immovable. A man
had an inalienable right to the doc-
tor of his choice and the medical
treatment he could afford.

But what did Mock mean; we
can be too healthy?

“Charley,” Grayle had asked
Brand, “what percentage of the na-
tional income went into medicine
last year?”

“Therapy, education, research,
production, or construction?”

“Everything.”

“Let’s see — fifteen point six, ten
point one, twelve point nine, five
point two, eight point seven — that’s
— what does that add up to?”

“Fifty-two point five,” said
Grayle.

In the darkness of the concrete
room, he repeated the figure to him-
self. Nonsense, he muttered. . . .

It was a relief from thought to
discover that die recorder was run-
ning. He had only to press the play-
back stud to identify his captors.

He pressed the stud and listened,
engrossed, to the voices of Leah and
Russ and himself. . . . But before
the tape reached Leah’s frightened
cry, the door swung open and a
blinding light dazzled his eyes.

He stabbed the recorder into si-
lence and cursed silendy. He had
lost his chance.

“Police officers,” said a rou^
voice.

26

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“Get that light out of my eyes,”
Grayle said suspiciously. “Let me
see you.”

“Sure.”

The light, turned away, glittered
on badges, exposed faces, caps.

One of the two men looked fa-
miliar. Surely that was the sergeant
to whom he had turned over the
shover?

“Well, Medic,” the sergeant said,
“so we meet again, eh? Come on,
we’d better get out of here.”

“Certainly, but where’s the am-
bulance? Did you find it? Did you
catch the hijackers? Did you — ?”
“Hold it.” The sergeant chuckled.
“We ain’t got time for everything
now. The hijackers might come
back, eh, Dan?”

“You bet,” said Dan.

They went down long, marble
corridors, echoing with their foot-
steps, opening before them as the
flashlight moved forward into the
darkness. They reached a wide hall.
On each side were three sets of
heavy brass elevator doors, one set
standing open. Grayle followed the
officers into the car. The sergeant
pushed a button. They started up
with a jerk.

The elevator creaked and rattled
and wheezed until Grayle won-
dered whether it would ever make
it. He leaned back wearily against
the ornate brassw'ork of the wall
and thought, Fm lucky.

In his moment of safety he found
time to wonder about Leah. Was
the blind girl all right? Surely, she

hadn’t been hurt. And her father.
What was familiar about his face?

It reminded him of a picture, of
the time he had wandered through
the gallery of grim-faced past presi-
dents in the Court House headquar-
ters of the county medical society.
One of ffiem had worn a ghost of
a smile.

He had bent over, curiously, to
read the name on the tarnished
brass plate fastened to the bottom
of the frame. He bent again, in
imagination, trying to read the
memory engraved on his brain.

Dr. Russell Pearce
President, 1972-1983

Russell Pearce — of course, how
could he forget? Discoverer of elixir
vitae, developer of the synthesis
which bore his name, dying now of
senescence in a rotting house in the
middle of the city. . . . Dr. Rus-
sell Pearce — Russ — Leah’s father.

The door opened in front of
them. Hesitantly Grayle stepped out
into the hall. It was almost identi-
cal with the one below. He asked
impatiently, “What is this place?”

“City Hall,” said the sergeant.
“Come on.”

"What am I doing in City Hall?
I’m not going anywhere until you
answer my questions.”

“Hear that, Dan? He ain’t going
anywhere. Ain’t that the truth? Go
tell Coke were here.”

The other officer, big and sullen-
faced, slipped through a pair of
glass doors at the other end of the

Not So Great an Enemy

hall. The sergeant grinned and os*
tentatiously adjusted a pistol in the
holster at his side.

That one, Grayle thought with
a shudder, wouldn't be loaded with
anesthetic slivers. ‘Tou’ve got no
right to keep me here against my
will,” he said defiantly.

“Who’s keeping you here against
yoiu: will?” the sergeant asked, sur-
prised. 'Tou want to leave? Go
ahead. Of course, you’ve gotta be
careful about little accidents on the
way, like tripping on the stairs. It’s
a long way down.”

There was something awful
about it — this degradation of the
police power of the city. Its crimi-
nality paralyzed Grayle's will.

The wizened little man who
came back with Dan peered at
Grayle speculatively. “He’s just a
medic,” he said petulantly, his
mouth curving down in disappoint-
ment.

"You expect us to be choosy?”
the sergeant complained.

"Well,” Coke said timidly, “I
hope it’s all right. Follow me.” He
motioned casually to Grayle.

The medic compressed his lips
defiantly. "No!”

The sergeant’s hand moved in a
blur of speed. It hit Grayle’s face,
palm open, with a solid, meaty
sound. The room reeled; Grayle’s
knees buckled. Anger burst over
him redly, and he straightened, his
arms ready for battle.

Dan stepped forward, grinning,
and kicked him in the groin.

27

The pain blurred everything as
Grayle lay curled on the floor, sob-
bing. Gradually it ebbed, and his
muscles relaxed enough to let his
legs fall away from his belly. Grayle
forced himself to his knees on the
cold, marble floor and struggled up.
He found the sergeant’s arm around
him, helping him stand.

“There now,” the oflBcer said
casually, "we're going to be sensible,
aren’t we?”

Grayle gritted his teeth and did
not groan. He let himself be led
through swinging glass doors into
a large room bisected by a long,
darkly polished coimter. Against
the right wall was a bench. On tlie
bench was a thin, weasel-faced
man.

The weasel face smirked at
Grayle. Thyroid, Grayle thought
dazedly. The shover. Free. Laugh-
ing. WTule he was held by the po-
lice, in agony.

By the time they reached the
heavy walnut door in the right wall,
Grayle could walk without crip-
pling pain. "Where are we going?”
he got out between clenched teeth.

“The Boss needs a doctor,” Coke
said, trotting past him to open the
door. Beyond was darkness. "It’s
about time he should wake up.”

‘YVho”s the Boss?”

The gray little man stared at
him incredulously. "John Bone, of
course.”

“Coke!” screamed a voice thinned
with pain. “Coke! Where are you?”

“Here, boss!” Coke said in a

28

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

frightened voice. “Here with a
medic!"

He scurried across the room to
draw curtains away from tall win-
dows. The light crept in grayly
across the floor, onto the wide bed
with its tumbled covers. A man was
sitting upright among them. He
was cadaverously thin, his face a
blade, his arms and legs mere sticks.

“A medic!” he screamed. “Who
wants a medic? I‘m dying. I need a
doctor!"

“This is all we could get,” Coke
squeaked, trembling.

“Oh, all right,” Bone said. “Hell
have to do.” He swung his feet over
the edge of the bed and fitted them
into baby-blue mules. “Come, Med-
ic. Treat me!”

‘Where's your contract?” Grayle
demanded.

“Contract!” Bone screamed wild-
ly. 'Who's got a contract? If I had
a contract do you think I’d be hi-
jacking medics?”

"No contract, no treatment.”

The hand hit him on the back of
the neck like a club. Grayle sagged
and almost fell. Distantly he heard
his own voice saying, “That won’t
do any good.”

When the blackness went away,
he was sitting in a chair near the
bed. He turned his head painfully.
The policemen were standing be-
hind him, one on each side. In the
doorway, the shover was lurking,
watching eagerly. Coke was in front
of him. Pacing back and forth be-
tween the chair and the window

was Bone, his mules clacking
against the marble floor and then
clumping on the thick carpeting.

“If this is because of the shover
— ” Grayle began hazily.

“Crumm?” Bone laughed scorn-
fully. “That’s right, you turned him
in. Why should I be sore about
that? He’s out, ain’t he? What I
want. Medic, is treatment. Can’t
you see I’m dying?”

'We’re all dying,” Grayle said.

Bone stopped and stared fiercely
at Grayle. “Sure. But some of us
can put it off longer if we’re smart,
I’m smart. 1 want treatment. I can
pay — why shouldn’t I have treat-
ment? W^y should I be discrimi-
nated against? You think nobody
ever got treatment who wasn’t en-
titled to it?”

“The qnly thing I know is that
there are ethical standards and I’m
bound to them. What difference
does it make?" he said defiantly.
“You don’t need a doctor; you need
a psychiatrist. The only disease
you’ve got is hypochondria. Every-
body knows that."

Bone turned to stare at Grayle
with dark, unreadable eyes. "So,” he
said softly. “A h^'pochondriac, am
I? I am not dying, eh? Who is to
say? These pains in my belly, they
are imaginary? My head is sick?
WeU, maybe. Come here. I want
to show you something.”

Grayle didn’t move quickly
enough. A rough hand shoved him
out of the chair, propelled him
across the room. Sullenly, he stood

29

Not So Great an Enemy

beside Bone in front of one of the
tall windows. The dawn had come,
and the city lay beneath them, gild-
ed, the signs of decay hidden.

“Look!” Bone said grandiloquent-
ly, encompassing the city within
the sweep of his arm. “My city! I
am the last of a dying breed, the
political boss. After me, the deluge.
There will be no more city. It will
fall apart. Is that not a sad thing?”
Grayle looked at tlie city, know-
ing its ruins, and thought it would
be a very good diing if it were all
destroyed by fire or flood, wiped off
the Earth just as medicine had
wiped out smallpox, diphtheria,
malaria, and a hundred other in-
fectious diseases — only in a differ-
ent way, of course.

“The City,” Bone mused. “It is
a strange thing. It has a life of its
own, a personality, emotions. I woo
her, I rage at her, I beat her. But
underneath it all there is love. She
is dying, and there is no medicine
to save her.” There were real tears
in Bone’s eyes.

“I can’t help her,” Bone said
softly, beating his fist gently against
the paneled wall beside the win-
dow. “I can only weep. What has
killed her? That cancer there upon
the hill! The doctors have killed
her. Medicine has killed her.”

Grayle looked where the skeletal
finger pointed, toward the hill ris-
ing like an island of sunlight out
of a sea of night. The reddish, slant-
ing rays gleamed on the stout walls
and towers of Hospital Hill.

'Toit killed it,” Bone went on,
his eyes burning, “killed it w'ith
your talk of carcinogens and urban
perils. ‘Get out of tlie city!’ you
said, and wealth left, moved into
the country, built its automatic fac-
tories, and left us bloodless, leu-
kemia eating at our veins. And in-
side, the hospitals grew, gobbling
block after block, taking one-quarter
of the city off the tax rolls and then
a tliird. Medicine killed her.”

“All medicine did was present
the facts and let the public act
upon them,” Grayle said stiffly.

Bone beat at his own forehead
with the side of a fist. "You’re ri^t,
you’re right. We did it ourselves. I
wanted you to see that. We gave
ourselves into the hands of the phy-
sicians, saying, ‘Save us! Make us
live!’ And you did not ask, ‘How
live? Why?’

‘Take these pills, you said, and
we swallowed them. You need X-
rays, you said, and radioactive io-
dine and antibiotics and specifics
for this and that, and we took them
with our tonics and our one-a-day
vitamins.” His voice dropped into
a chant. “Give us this day our daily
vitamins. . . . With microsurgery
we can give you another year of
life, you said, with blood banks an-
other six months, with organ and
artery banks a month, a week. We
forced them on you because we were
afraid to die. What do you call
this morbid fear of disease and
death? Give it a name: hj'pochon-
dria!

30

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

"Look at it! Look at the city, dy-
ing. look at the wild growth of the
hospitals. The city has hypochon-
dria; the society has hypochondria
— and for once it will be fatal.”

He made surprising sense, Grayle
thought, in his own neurotic way.

"Call me a hypochondriac,” Bone
said, “and you are only saying that
I am a product of my environment.
More intimately than you, than
anyone, I am connected to my city.
We are dying together, the society
and I, and we will die crying out
to you, ‘Save us! Save us or we
die!’ ”

"I can’t do anything,” Grayle in-
sisted heavily. "Can’t you under-
stand that?”

Bone took it with surprising calm
as he turned his dark eyes toward
Grayle. "Oh, you’ll treat me,” he
said, offhand. "You think now that
you won't, but there will come a
time when the flesh conquers, when
it screams that it can endure no
more, when the nerves will grow
weary of pain and the will is agon-
ized with waiting, and you will
treat me.”

He studied Grayle casually, from
head slowly toward the feet,
reached curiously toward the belt
buckle. Before Grayle’s tension
could achieve action, his arms were
caught from behind, pinned back.

“A spool,” Bone said, “and some-
thing on it.” With an experienced
finger, he punched the button for
rewind and then playback. As the
voices came disembodied into the

room, he leaned back against the
paneled wall, listening with a thin,
speculative smile on his pale lips.
When it ended, his smile broad-
ened lazily. "Pick up the girl and
the old man. I think they might
be useful.”

Grayle understood him instantly.
"Don’t be foolish," he snapped.
"They mean nothing to me. I don’t
care what happens to them.”

"Tlien why protest?” Bone asked
blandly. He turned his eyes toward
the police officers. "Keep him close.
In die broken elevator, there’s an
idea.”

A minute later, the big, brass
doors clanged behind Grayle, and
he was in the darkness again.

But this was darkness with a dif-
ference. This was night gingerly
supported above a pit of nothing-
ness. It gave him a prickling, swell-
ing feeling of terror. . . .

He found himself later in front
of the doors, hammering against
them with futile, aching fists, his
voice hoarse from too much scream-
ing.

He forced himself to sit down
in a corner of the car. He forced
himself to forget that it was a car,
hanging broken over a void. There
was no escape.

He remembered punching the
old buttons of the control panel.
In his frenzy he had tom off a
fingernail trying to pry the door
open.

He found the black bag and
flipped on the light. He rummaged

31

Not So Great an Enemy

for a bandage, pressed it across the
finger where the nail had been.

Then he sat in the dark. It was
uncomfortable; he didn’t like it.
But it was better to sit in darkness
with the knowledge of light avail-
able if it is needed tlian to be with-
out any chance of light at all, . . .

Two hours later the doors swung
open, and Leah was tlirust between
them. His watch told him the time,
otherwise he would not have be-
lieved that it had not been at least
a day.

The girl staggered blindly, and
Grayle was as blind as she. He
sprang to his feet, tliough, caught
her before she fell, and held her
tightly. She fought against him,
twisting in his arms, lasliing out
wildly with her arms and feet.

"It’s me,” Grayle said repeatedly,
"the medic.” When she stopped
struggling, Grayle started to release
her, but she clutched at his arm,
and held herself, trembling, against
him.

It was a curious sensation for
Grayle. It was a comforting thing,
not professional, skillful, or imper-
sonal like his medical skill. Tliis
was clumsy; it offered part of him-
self.

"Where are we?” she whispered.

“A broken elevator car in City
Hall,” he said huskily. “John Bone.”

"What does Bone want?” she
asked. Her voice was almost steady;
it made him feel stronger, abler,
listening to it.

‘Treatment.”

"And you won’t.” It was a state-
ment. "You’re consistent, anyway.
I reported your kidnaping to Med-
ical Center. Maybe they’ll help.”

It kindled a hopeful flame, but
reality put it out. Medical Center
would have no way of locating him,
and they wouldn’t tear apart the
city for one minor medic. He was
on his ow'n. “Did Bone get your fa-
ther, too?”

"No,” Leah said evenly. “The
Agency got him. They saw Russ
when they came about the kidnap-
ing. One of them recognized him.
They took him in.”

"That’s fantastic!” Grayle ex-
claimed incredulously. “Where did
they take him?”

"The Experimental Ward.”

"Not Dr. Pearce!”

Tou remember now who he was.
So did they. They used his old,
reciprocal contract as an excuse be-
cause the terminating date was set
arbitrarily at one hundred. Doctors
didn't use to live that long. I guess
they sdll don't.”

“But he's famous!”

"That’s why they want him; he
knows too much, and too many peo-
ple remember him. They’re afraid
the Antivivisection Party will get
hold of him and use him against
the Profession in some way.
They’ve been looking for him sixty
years now — ever since he walked
out of the hospital and disappeared
into the city.”

"I remember now,” Grayle said

32

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

quickly, “It was like Ambrose
Bierce, they said. He was lectur-
ing to a class — on hematology, I
think — and he stopped in the mid-
dle of a sentence, and he said,
‘Gentlemen, we have gone too far;
it is time to retrace our steps and
discover where we went astray.’
Then he walked out of the class-
room and out of the hospital and
no one ever saw him again. No one
ever knew what he meant.”

“Those days are forgotten. He
never talks — talked about them. I
thought the hiding was over. I
thought they had finally given him
up. . . . Why does John Bone
want me?”

“He hopes he can force me to
treat him — by — ”

“Torturing me? Did you laugh
at him?”

“No. No, I didn't do diat.”

"Why not?”

“Maybe I didn’t think fast
enough.”

Slowly Leah pulled her hand
away, and they sat silently in the
darkness. Grayle’s thoughts were
charged; he could scarcely bear to
consider them.

“I’m going to look at your eyes,”
he said suddenly.

He got out his ophthalmoscope
and leaned toward the girl, focus-
ing the spot of light on the clouded
cornea. She sat still, let him pull
up her eyelids, pull down the soft
skin of her cheek. He nodded slow-
ly to himself and put the instru-
ment away.

“Is there any hope, doctor?” she
asked drily.

He Hed. “No,” he said. . . .

It was unethical; it gave him a
queer, dizzy feeling as if he had
&ro^\Ti mud at the hospital wall
but it was mixed with a strange
feeling of elation. It was mercy.
Sure she could see — if she had an
operation costing several thousand
dollars more than she would ever
have. It was mercy to kill that hope
quickly and finally.

Maybe it wasn’t ethical, but he'd
just begun to realize there w'ere
times when a doctor must treat the
patient and not the disease. In
spite of what the professors said.
Each patient was an individual
with his own problems and his own
treatment, and only part of both
were medical.

“I don’t understand,” he said
abruptly, “w^hy the people let John
Bone continue here with his corrup-
tion and his graft and his violence.”

“That is only one side and one
few people see. To most of them
he is the patron — or, in longer
translation, the one who does
things for us. What are you going
to do about him?”

“Treat him,” Grayle said quietly.
‘There’s no point in being quixotic
about this.”

“But, Medic — !" she began.

“Ben,” he said. “Ben Grayle. I
don't want to talk about it. Some-
one might be listening.”

After that there was more silence
than talking, but it w'as a warm sort

Not So Grcut an Enemy

of silence, warmer perhaps than
speech, and her hand came creep-
ing back into his.

When the policemen opened the
door, it was niglat again. Grayle
had only a glimpse of the hall be-
fore they were hustled in to see
Bone m the dark-paneled room.
The political boss had a warm, red
robe wrapped around his body, and
he looked chilled.

“So ibis is the girl. Blind, t
should have known that. ^Vell,
Medic, what is it to be?*’

Grayle shrugged, “ril treat you,
of course.”

Bone rubbed his thin hands to-
gellier widi a dry, sandpaper sound.
“Good, good.” Suddenly he stopped
and smiled. “But how can I be sure
that you will treat me properly?
Maybe we should show the medic
what jny lack of treatment will
mean to the girl?”

‘Tliat isn't necessary,” Grayle
said hastily. ‘Tm not a fool. You're
iilming this. After I treat you, you’ll
use it as blackmail to get future
treatment. 16 ) 0 U aren’t satisfied,
you can turn it over to the county
society. Besides — ’’ bis voice deep-
ened siuldenly, surprisingly —
“touch the girl, and I ivon’t lift a
finger to save your life!”

'I'he light in Bone’s eyes might
have been achniration. “I like you.
Medic,” he said. “Throw in with
me. We’d make a pair.”

"No, thanks,” Cradle said scorn-
fully.

S3

"Think it over. . Let me know if
you change your mind,” Bone said.
“But let’s get down to business.”
His voice was eager.

“Have the ambulance motor
started.”

Bone nodded at the sergeant. “Do
it!”

They w-aited, the four of them,
stiff witli a watchful uncertaint)’.
When the depths of the bag glowed
dimly, Grayle began fastening the
instruments to Bone’s emaciated
body.

Where’s Coke? he wondered.

He read the diagnosis, removed
llie instruments, and slowly stowed
them a^vay. Tliougiitfully, he ex-
plored the pockets of die bag.

"What is it?” Bone asked anxi-
ously. "Tell me what’s wrong!”

Grayle’s face was sober. “It’s
nothing to be concerned about,” he
said. “You need a tonic. You’re tak-
ing vitamins already, I’m sure. Dou-
ble the dose.” He pulled out a bottle
of pink pills. "Here’s some barbitu-
ratc-emplietamine pills to put you
to sleep at night and wake you up
in tlte morning. And here’s some
extra ones.” He handed Bone a sec-
ond bottle; in it the pills were
round, flat, and green. "These are
important — take one every four
hours.”

Bone frowned cautiously.
"What’s in them?”

"Nothing to hurt you.” Grayle
shook out a couple into his hand,
tossed them into his mouth, sw’al-
hnved. "See?”

34

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Bone nodded, satisfied. He swiv-
eled to the policeman. “Okay. Take
them back.”

“Wait a minute,” Grayle object-
ed. “Aren’t you going to turn us
loose?”

“M^ere’d you get that idea?”
Bone chuckled. “I like having a
medic around. Gives me a feeling
of security.”

Grayle sighed, accepting it.
“Well, I guess there’s nothing I can
do.” He bent to pick up the bag
and noticed the expression of dis-
appointment that flickered across
Leah’s face. His hand strayed past
Bone’s neck. “Here,” Grayle said to
the officer watching them suspi-
ciously. “I suppose you’ll want to
keep this.”

The policeman stepped forward
to accept the bag and moved back
into place with it in his hand. With
the hand that held the gun, he
reached down to scratch ffie back
of his other hand.

Slowly Bone collapsed behind
Grayle. It made a rustling sound.
The policeman tried to lift his gun,
but it was too heavy. It pulled him
down. He fell.

"What’s happened?” Leah asked,
startled.

Grayle caught up her hand and
scooped up the black bag in one
swift motion. “I knocked out Bone
with supersonics and the cop with
a hypodermic of neo-curare. Come
on.”

As they went through the glass
doors into the hall, he wondered

again 1 Where's Coke? He thumbed
the elevator call button and waited
in a frenzy of impatience. Leah
held his hand firmly, confidently.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get us out.”
Cool certainty flooded over him.
His shoulders straightened.

When the elevator doors opened,
the sergeant stood there facing
them. He stared, surprised, and his
hand dropped to his gun.

Grayle stepped forward confi-
dently. “Bone said to let us loose.”
“That don’t sound like Bone,”
the sergeant growled. He tugged his
gun loose. "Let’s go check.”

Grayle shrugged, released Leah’s
hand so that he could shift the bag
into that one, and swung around
so that the bag bumped the ser-
geant’s leg. The sergeant brushed
the spot casually, took two steps,
and fell, heavily. . . .

As Grayle and Leah stepped out
of the elevator into the basement
hall, the lights went out. Cokel
Grayle thought, and groaned.

“What's the matter?” Leah asked,
alarmed.

“The lights went out.”

“I can help if I knew what you
were trying to do.”

“Find the ambulance. It should
be somewhere in the basement.”
“They must have brought me in
that w'ay,” Leah said thoughtfully.
“There was a door that clanged,
some steps, a door, some more steps,
and then a straight stretch to the
elevator. Come on.”

Grayle held back for a moment

Not So Great an 'Enemy 3 5

and then let her pull lum into the
darkness. 'There’s steps,” she said.
They walked down carefully.
Grayle found the handle of the door
and held it open. A moment later
they were descending more steps.

“Tliis way,” Leah said confident-

ly'

Within seconds they were beside
the ambulance, climbing in, switch-
ing on the lights. Grayle swung it
around with a feeling of elation ap-
proaching giddiness. Even the sight
of the closed, garage door didn’t
bother him. He eased the ambu-
lance as . close as possible, stepped
out, touched the door gingerly, and
tugged at the handle. It rose with
well-oiled ease.

After that it was nothing. Grayle
headed north for Sixth Street Traf-
ficway, to avoid ambush and shake
off pursuers. On the road, he could
outdistance anything. After a few
minutes they hit Southwest Traf-
ficway. Grayle turned the driving
over to the Chauffeur, and swung
around to look at Leah. She was
sitting on the cot.

“Look!” he began, “I — ” And he
stopped.

“Don’t you know what to do with
me?” she asked, smiling gently.

‘Well, I — I guess that’s right. I
can’t leave you alone out here, and
if I take you to your home. Bone
might pick you up again. There’s
rules against taking anyone into the
Center — ” He took a deep breath.
“The hell with the rules. Listen!
You’re a patient. For — an eye oper-

ation, replacement of opaque cor-
nea. You’ve been transferred from
the Neosho County Hospital —
that’s just outside Chanute, Kansas,
in case they ask questions — and
you don’t know why your records
haven’t got here yet. Understand?”

“Won’t that mean trouble for
you?” she asked.

"Nothing I can’t get out of. If
anyone sees us together — why, I
was fooled, too, that’s all. No argu-
ment now. It’ll give us an extra
day to decide what to do with you.”

“Will I be able to see my fa-
ther?"

“Of course not,” Grayle snapped.
‘Wot if he’s in Experimental, any-
way. The only ones allowed in are
doctors and attendants on duty.”

“I understand. All right. I’ll leave
it up to you.”

Again Grayle felt that quick, ir-
rational flood of happiness. It was
inappropriate. He shoved it down,
deep, as the walls of Medical Cen-
ter opened and took them in.

They were lucky. There was no
one around as Grayle parked the
ambulance in the vast, underground
garage and led Leah cautiously to
the subway. They waited in the
shadows until an empty car swung
into view.

“Move quickly,” he said. “Trust
me.”

He led her onto the moving belt,
holding her forearm in a sure grip.
Even so, she swayed and almost
fell. He pulled her up and led her
svidftly after the car moving on the

36

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

belt beside them. Just as they
reached the end of the approach-
way, Grayle helped her into the car
and swung after her.

He was sweating. The subway
wasn't built for the blind.

Getting off was much less dijB&-
cult. The sign above the archway
said: EENT. They walked into an
elevator and let it lift them to the
fifth floor. Grayle watched from the
concealment of a cross-corridor
while Leah felt her way to the glass
enclosure of the duty office.

"Is there anyone here?” she asked
out of her darkness. “There was a
medic, but he had to leave. I'm
from the Neosho Coimty Hospi-
tal. . . .”

As Grayle faded down the hall,
he saw the nurse come out of the
office with a look of concern. He
sighed. Leah was safe temporarily.

He walked through the dark halls
wondering where everybody was. It
was only eight o'clock in the eve-
ning.

The floor under his feet was
yielding and resilient. He breathed
in the hospital smells of ether and
alcohol, the old odors, omnipresent,
eternal. They were his first memor)’
of his father. It was a good smell.
He filled his lungs with it, held it
in tightly, as if he could hold on to
everything he valued if only he
could keep this from escaping.-

This was his place, his home.
This w'as his job. This was his life.
He kad to hang on to that belief.
Otherwise everything was worthless,

seven years of study and labor were
wasted, and a lifetime of dreams
was turned into nightmare.

Charley Brand looked up from
his desk, surprised. “My God, man!
Where've you been?”

"A long story,” Grayle said weari-
ly. ‘Tirst I’ve got to have some food
and some rest.”

‘They’ll have to wait. There's a
royal request on your desk.”

There was a message glowing on
the plate set into the- top of his
desk. He read it with a cold, shrink-
ing viscera.

Your presence is requested at
the meeting of die Wyandotte
County Medical Society this eve-
ning and at the meeting of the
Political Action Committee to
follow.

J. B. Hardy, M.D.

Secretary

Grayle looked around the dormi-
tory with frantic eyes. ‘YVhere’s
Hal?”

“Do you think he'd miss a meet-
ing?” Brand asked sardonically and
added a good imitation of Mock’s
knowing voice. “ ‘These things look
good on your record.' Better run
along. If you hurry you can still
make the convoy.”

It was more of a tradition than
anything else — this convoy detail
with the helicopters hovering above.
No one was foolish enough to at-
tack anything stronger than a lone
ambulance.

37

Not So Great an Enemy

The)’ drove north on Seventh
Street Trafi&cway over die Armour-
dale Industrial District that flamed
below them in the night. Grayle
looked out, unseeing, bis fatigue
and hunger conquered by anxiety.

Why did ike PAG want to see
him ?

Few medics and fewer doctors
got summons to appear before the
committee. It was not an envia-
ble thing. It was followed, frequent-
ly, by Ae person invoh'ed quiedy
collecting 1^ personal belongings
from the hospital and disappearing
from the sight of medicine.

Wlien the convoy pulled up in
front of the Court House, Grayle
was still tormenting himself with
possibilities.

As usual, the meeting was a bore.
When the anxiety ebbed, Grayle
dozed in his chair, jerking himself
up occasionally to hear a few words.

There was a moving speech by
the A.M.A. field representative on
the danger to ethical standards in
new legislation pending before Con-
gress. Its inevitable result was so-
cialized medicine.

Funny, Graj’le mused, how that
Hydra was never scotched. Cut off
one head and two more grew in its
place. Doctors should know enough
to cauterize the stump.

By unanimous voice vote, $325,-
000 was turned over to the Wash-
ington lobby for legislative action.

The chairman of the Political
Action Committee stood up. Ac-
cording to him, the political situa-

tion was under control at state and
count)’ levels. The Antixivisection
Party had closed alliances with a
number of quasi-religious groups
during the last months, but this
was expected to amount to no more
than usual. Everyone had been giv-
en a mimeographed slate of. the
state and county candidates. They
had all received PAC approval.

The slate was accepted widiout
dissent. A sum of $553,000 was
voted for campaign expenses.

There was more.

When the general meeting had
been adjourned, Grayle w'andered
slowly toward the door of the room
announced for the PAC meeting.

"Grayle?"

It was the chairman of tlie com-
mittee. Grayle followed him numbly
into the big room. There were five
of them, ^e chairman taking his
place in the middle. They sat sol-
emn-faced behind a long, heavy
desk made of dark old w<^.

"You’re in trouble, boy," the
chairman began. "There's quite an
indictment against you.”

The doctor on the chairman's
right leaned forward, a small mem-
oreader in his hand. "Last night,
while on an emergency call into the
City, you turned over to the police
an alleged shover named Crumm.
You offered the police some al-
leged evidence.”

"There wasn’t anything alleged
about it, sir. It was an open-and-
shut case.”

"Unfortimately, that isn’t true.

38

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

As a consequence you have put
Medical Center, the society, and the
Profession in an uncomfortable po-
sition. We have received a com-
plaint about you from the Chief of
Police.”

Grayle stared at them.

“Crumm was dismissed at 9
a.m. There was no foundation to
die charges.”

“But I gave diem the ampule he
offered me,” Grayle said in bewil-
derment, "the recording of his offer,
my afiBdavit — ”

“Wordiless. You misimderstood
him. He had a license. And the
penicillin in the ampule tested a
full three hundred thousand units.”

“A t)'pical Bone trick! He took
out a license and backdated it.”

"Obiiously. Nevertheless, you
laid yourself and us open to a false
arrest suit. You should have better
judgment. Medic.”

"They’re lying about the penicil-
lin,” Grayle said hopefully. "They
couldn't sell it at that price; it was
less dian wholesale."

“If you had been listening to the
reports tonight, you would have
learned that we have decided in
recent weeks to abandon the use of
penicillin — which makes it worth-
less. When it w'as first introduced,
immune bacterial strains averaged
five percent. Now they are ninety-
five percent and still climbing. The
same thing is true of aureomycin,
streptomycin, neomycin, terramy-
cin, and a dozen others. Naturally
John Bone can get them at less

than cost. There are mountains of
the stuff lying around useless.”
The doctor put down his memo-
reader. “The important point,
Grayle, is that those who buy from
John Bone aren’t in the market for
honest medicine anyway. We can’t
help matters by penaJi^g agents,
even if we had the power. You don't
cure diseases by treating symptoms.
You don’t treat coronaries by am-
putating a finger.”

“What do we do?” Grayle de-
manded. “Give up?”

The doctor smiled. "That’s what
the PAG is for. We refused to re-
new John Bone’s contract. We
knew that would bring him to his
senses.” His face hardened. “At
least, we thought it would.”

“What do you mean?” Grayle felt
vaguely frightened.

“Until Bone released you . .
Grayle stared at the five immo-
bile faces. “He didn’t release me.
I escaped!”

“Now, Grayle, don’t waste our
time with stuff like that,” the chair-
man said impatiendy. “Men don’t
escape from John Bone. And we
have evidence — a. film of the ex-
amination and treatment you gave
him!”

"But I did,” Grayle broke in.
used the supersonic anesthetizer
and a hypodermic of neo-curare
and I escaped — ”

“Fantastic!”

"I gave him sugar pills — ”

“Just as bad. They’re as effective
as anything else.”

Not So Great an Enemy 39

"What did you expect of me?”
Grayle protested. “Should I have
got myself killed? Don’t you see
why Bone sent you the films? It
was for revenge. If I’d really treat-
ed him, he’d have held these films
over my head as a blackmail threat."

The committee members ex-
changed glances. “We might be able
to accept that,” the chairman said,
"except tliat we have other evidence
to prove that you hold the Profes-
sion and its etliics rather lightly.”

He switched on a recorder. In-
credulously, Grayle listened to his
voice mouthing questions about
medicine and fees and social prob-
lems. It was skillfully edited. It was
damning.

Hal, he thought, Hal, why did
you do it?

But he knew why. Hal Mock was
worried that he might not graduate.
One less in the class was one more
chance for Hal.

The chairman was speaking to
him. "You will submit your resigna-
tion in the morning. As soon after
that as possible, you will collect
your personal effects and leave the
Center. If you are ever discovered
practicing medicine . . .”

When it was finished, Grayle
asked quietly, 'M^at are you going
to do with Dr. Russell Pearce?”

The chairman’s eyes narrowed
and then he turned to the doctor
on his right. “Dr. Pearce?” he said
suavely. “Why he disappeared sixty
years ago, didn’t he? He must have
died long ago. A pity . .

Grayle stopped listening. Some-
thing had finally snapped, like a
carbon-steel scalpel, and he didn't
have to listen any more. A man
spends his life searching for the
truth. If he’s lucky he learns before
he dies that no one has it all. We
each have little pieces.

The danger was in assuming our
fragment was the whole.

Medicine could not be botli po-
litical and irresponsible.

Dr. Pearce could not be both
hero and villain.

Grayle had finally found his way
to the back of the statue and
learned — in time — that half an
ideal is w'orse than none at all.

He turned and walked out of the
room. While the Chauffeur guided
the ambulance back toward Medical
Center, he fished around in tlie
black bag for a couple of ampheta-
mine pills and ate them like candy.

But his feeling of exhilaration
and purpose began minutes before
the stimulant hit him. He wasn’t
even disturbed to discover that he
was being followed. He shook off
the white jacket in the subway.

"Look,” he said to the pharma-
cist on duty, “it must get pretty
boring here at night. Don’t you get
an overwhelming yen for a cup of
coffee?”

"I sure do.”

"Go ahead,” Grayle said. "I’ll
watch the pharmacy.”

The pharmacist hesitated, tom
between duty and desire, but the
decision came from a reluctance to

40

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

appear timid before the medic.

As soon as he was gone, Grayle
went straight through the pharmacy
to the vault. The heavy door was
ajar. In the farthest comer was a
modest cardboard carton. Its con-
tents had been estimated, conserva-
tively, as worth $10,000,000.
Grayle pocketed an ampule, hesi-
tated, and removed the eleven oth-
ers from their cotton nests — he was
suddenly doubtful that the hospital
should be trusted with them . . .

“Thanks for the break,” said the
pharmacist gratefully.

Grayle waved carelessly as he
left. "Any time.”

At the barred door of Experi-
mental Ward, the guard stopped
him. “I don’t see your name here
anywhere,” he growled, his finger
moving down the duty list.

‘T>Jo wonder,” Grayle said, point-
ing his finger. “They misspelled it.
Quayle instead of Grayle.”

It worked. Inside, he walked
quickly past the blood bank with
its rows of living factories, the or-
gan bank with its surgery and auto-
matic heart . . . The experimen-
tal rooms devoted to geriatrics were
at the very end.

Dr. Pearce made scarcely a dent
in the firm hospital mattress. Grayle
shook him, but the smudged eyelids
wouldn’t open. He filled a hypo-
dermic from the ampule in his jack-
et pocket and injected it into a
vein.

Grayle waited anxiously in the
near darkness. Finally Dr. Pearce’s

eyelids flickered. "Dr. Pearce,” he
whispered. “This is the medic. Re-
member?” Pearce nodded, barely
perceptibly. “I’m going to try to get
you out of here, you and Leah. She’s
here, too. Will you help?”

Pearce nodded again, stronger
this time. Grayle brought the long
cart beside the bed and lifted
Pearce’s bone-light body onto it. He
pulled a sheet up over the face.
“Here we go."

He engaged die clutch and guid-
ed the cart back the way he had
come, past the rooms with their bur-
dens of human tragedy, through the
door, past the starded guard. The
guard acted as if he were going to
say something, but he waited too
long.

When they were entering the
elevator, Pearce whispered in a
'dust-dry voice, "What was the shot,
medic?”

"Elixir vitae. Isn't that justice?” .

“So seldom do we get it.”

“When did you have your last
shot?”

“Sixty years ago.”

Which cleared up that point.
‘Tou said you’d give Leah your eyes.
Did you mean it?”

“Yes. Can you do it?”

The years had dessicated the
body, but they hadn't dimmed the
mind, Grayle thought. Pearce had
realized instantly what Grayle
meant. "I don’t know,” he admitted.
“It’s a chance. I'll have to do it
all alone, hastily. I could give her
some from the bank, but she would

41

Not So Great ari Enemy

hate it. With yours it would be dif*
ferent.”

"A gift of love/' Pearce whis-
pered. “It can never be refused.
That is how it should be done al-
ways, with love. Don't tell her. Af-
terwards she’ll understand, how it
made me happy to give her what I
could not give her as a father — the
world of light. . .

The duty office was vacant.
Grayle ran his finger down the room
list until he found Leah’s name. He
found another cart, ran it silently
into the room, and stopped beside
the bed. “Leah?”

“Ben?” she said instantly.

For a moment it blunted the cold
edge of his determination. It had
been a long time since anyone had
called him “Ben” like that. “Onto
the cart. I've got your father. We’re
going to make a break for it.”

“You’ll be ruined.”

“It was done for me,” he said.
“Funny. You have an ideal — may-
be it looks like your father — and
you think it exists outside you. But
it doesn’t; it’s inside. And one day
you look and it isn’t there any more.
There was no basis for it; it was a
dream. And you’re free.”

The cart was rolling toward the
elevator. On tlie floor below, he
guided die cart into the EENT op-
erating room. As it bumped gently
against the cart on which Pearce
was lying, Leah put out a hand,
touched her father’s arm, and said,
“Russ!”

“Leah!”

For a moment it stabbed Grayle
with jealousy; he felt left out, alone.
‘Tou were right,” Leah said, and
she put out anoAer hand to catch
hold of Grayle and pull him close.
“He is die man. Better even than we
thought.”

“Find a great deal of happiness,
children,” Pearce said.

Grayle chuckled happily. “I think
you two planned the whole diing.”

Leah blushed slowly. She's really
beautiful, Grayle thought in sudden
surprise. "No, we only hoped it,”
she said.

Grayle injected the anesthetic,
felt her fingers relax, droop away.
Motionless, he stared at her face
and then held up his hands in front
of his eyes. They were trembling.
He looked around at the gleaming
whiteness of the walls, the delicate
microsurgical tools, the suturing
machine, the bandages, and he
knew how easy it would be to slip,
to make the fatal mistake.

“Courage, Medic," said Pearce.
‘You’ve studied for seven years. You
can do this simple thing.”

He took a deep breath. Yes, he
could do it. And he went at it as
it should be done — with love.

“Medic Grayle,” said tlie hidden
speaker in the ceiling, "report to
the dormitory. Medic Grayle. . . .”

They had discovered that Pearce
was missing. The old man talked
to him while his hands w'ere busy
and helped take his mind off the
terrifying consequences. He told

42

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Grayle why he had walked out on
his class sixty years before.

“It suddenly came to me — the
similarity between medicine and re-
ligion. We fostered it with our tra-
dition-building, our indecipherable
prescriptions, our ritual. They
called the new medicines wonder
drugs because they didn’t know
how they worked. Religion and
medicine — both owed their great
periods to a pathological fear of
death. He is not so great an enemy.”

Grayle made depth readings of
die cloudy corneas and set them
into the microsurgical machine.

“Oh, the doctore weren’t to
blame. We were a product of our
society just as John Bone is a prod-
uct of his. But we forgot an ancient
wisdom which might have given us
the strength to resist. A sound mind
in a sound body, the Greeks said.
And even more important. Nothing
m excess."

Grayle positioned the shining
scalpel over Leah’s right eye. The
blade slipped into the eye without
resistance, slicing away the cornea.

“Anything in excess will ruin
this society or any other. Even the
best of things. The lifespan can be
extended to a reasonable length
without overburdening the society.
Then we run into the law of dimin-
ishing returns, and it takes just as
much again to push it a year far-
ther, and then six months, a week,
a day. There is no end, and our fear
is such that we can’t say, ‘Stop!
We’re healthy enough 1’ ”

The scalpel retracted and moved
to the left eye.

“The extra lives we were sa\’ing
were peripheral: the very young,
the very old, and the constitutional
inadequate. We repealed natural se-
lection, saved the weak to reproduce
themselves, and told ourselves that
we were healthier.”

Both corneas were gone. Grayle
looked at his watch. It was taking
too long. He turned to Pearce.

“No anesthetic,” Pearce said. As
the microsurgical machine descend-
ed into position, Grayle was rock-
steady.

The empty sockets were band-
aged.

‘We destroyed the cities with our
doom-sayings,” Pearce went on,
"and we amassed a disproportionate
amount of capital with our tax-ex-
emptions. Like religion again, in
Medieval Europe, when piety accu-
mulated wealth free from le\ies.”

The corneas were in place.

“It couldn’t last in Europe, and
it can’t last here. Henry VIII found
an excuse to break with the Pope
and appropriate the Church lands.
In France it helped bring the Revo-
lution. And thus this noble experi-
ment will end. In ice or fire — by
tlie degeneration of technology be-
low die level necessary to sustain
it, or by rebellion. And that’s why
I went into the city.”

The suturing machine drove its
tiny needles into the edges of the
cornea, stitching it to the eye in a
neat graft.

"That's where the future will be
made, where the people are surviv-
ing because they are strong. There
we are learning new things — the
paranormal methods of health that
are not so new after all, but the
age-old methods of healers. When
the end comes, the fine spacious
life in the country will end like
the May fiy. The City will survive
and grow again. Outside they will
die of diseases their bodies have for-
gotten, of cancer they cannot resist,
of a hundred difEerent ailments for
which the medicine has been lost.”
As the bandages were fastened
over Leah’s eyes, the speaker in the

ceiling spoke again. "Emergency
squads report to stations. Heavily
armed forces attacking St. Luke’s.”

The time for caution was past.
Grayle taped together the cart legs
and guided them across the hall
into ^e elevator. They dropped to
the subway level. Clumsily, Grayle
maneuvered the two carts across ^e
approachway into one of the cars
and swung himself aboard after
them.

In short moments the garage
would be swarming with dae emer-
gency squads.

Another speaker boomed: "Snip-
ers on buildings along Main Street

I

44

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

are shelling St. Luke’s with five-
inch mortars. No casualties report-
ed. Emergency squads, on the dou-
ble.”

"Has it started already?” Pearce
asked softly.

As they reached tlie garage, men
were racing past them. No one paid
any attention to tlie medic guiding
the two carts. Grayle stopped at the
first unoccupied ambulance, opened
the back, and lifted Leah’s uncon-
scious body onto one of the stretch-
ers. He lifted Pearce onto the other
one. He slammed the door shut and
raced around to tlie front.

Just as the engine caught, a
startled medic raced up and pound-
ed futilely against the door. Grayle
pulled away in a burst of speed.

The ambulance was only one ve-
hicle among many; they streamed
from the Center: ambulances, half-
tracks, tanks. At Southwest Traf-
ficway, Grayle edged out of the
stream and turned north. North—
into the City.

John Bone was waiting beside the
garage door under City Hall.
“Okay,” he told Coke, "you can call
off die diversion now.” He gave
Grayle a twisted grin. “I had a feel-
ing you'd turn up here sooner or
later. Come on in.”

"Said the spider to the fly,”
Grayle said, smiling. “No, thanks.
You’ll get healed and better than I
can do it. But not now."

Bone’s face wrinkled angrily. “By
whom?”

“These,” Grayle said, waving his
hand toward tlie back of the ambu-
lance.

"An old man? A blind girl?”

"A blind old man, and a girl
who might see. Yes. They can do
more for you tlian I can. We’ll get
along, Bone.”

Bone grimaced. “Yes. Yes, I sup-
pose we wiU.”

Leah was stirring. Gra5de reached
back and put a hand on her fore-
head. She grew quiet. He turned
back to Bone and stripped off his
white jacket and tossed it to the
political boss of the city. “Here,
maybe this will do you some good.
You can have the ambulance, too,
when it's taken us home.”

Home. He smiled. He had
thrown in his lot with the City.
He had even forgotten his filters.
There was brutality in the City,
but you can tame it, put its mis-
directed vitality to use.

But the only tiling to do with
an ideal that has outworn its neces-
sity is to turn your back on it, to
leave it beliind.

There is no division between
men; there aren’t men and men in
white jackets. A doctor is only a
man with special skills. But a heal-
er is something more than a man.

They would make the beginning,
the old man, and tlie blind girl who
might see, and the medic who had
found a new ideal. “I spent seven
years learning to be a doctor,”
Grayle said. “I guess I can spend
seven years more learning to heal.”

AND THEN SHE FOUND HIM

• • •

You could smell the panic in
the town. Pale clerks and
tense defectives waited in
all the stores for the thief
that no one ever saw.

One merchant said the thefts
seemed humanly impossible-^
and he was a\most right . . . .

The special meeting of the
Merchants’ Protective Association
was held on the second floor of the
Caspar Building, above Teller's Em-
porium on Broad Street. Around
seven o'clock, before anybody’d had
a chance to more than half settle
his supper, members began coming
up the narrow stairs beside Teller’s
display window. Unsmiling, they
sat down on folding chairs that lost
their straight-rowed orderliness as
small groups bunched together to
talk in low, upset voices. In a short
time the air was thick with cigar
smoke, and the splintered old board
floor was black with scuffled ashes.
There was more than a touch of
panic in the atmosphere.

Todd Deerbush sat alone and un-
noticed in the back row, his bony

by Paul Janvier

45

46

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

ankles hooked owr the crossbar of
the seat in front of him. He looked
tiredly out from under the brim of
his khaki rainhat, and from time
to time, he pinched the bridge of
his narrow nose. He and Stannard
had rolled over four hundred miles
today, and more than fourteen hun-
dred in the past three da}’s, to be
in time for this meeting. Deer-
bush had driven all tlie way, while
Stannard analj’zed and re-analyzed
the slim sheaf of newspaper clip-
pings that had brought them here.
Now Stannard was in a hotel room,
sleeping. Tomorrow they’d rendez-
vous, Deerbush would give his re-
port on this meeting and tlie execu-
tive half of tlie team would begin
work.

Deerbush was dog-tired. Because
he could leave it to second nature,
his mind worked on alertly, but his
face fell into weary, unguarded
lines. He was somewhere near forty,
with features tliat could look either
younger or much older. Most im-
portant were his eyes. They were
set among radiating folds in his
gray skin. Shadowed by pinched
eyebrows, his eyes gave him the
look of long-accustomed solitude—
of a loneliness walled off and care-
fully, methodically sealed away.

In the front of the room, the
chairman was calling the meeting
to order. The minutes were ap-
proved as read and Old Business
was tabled by acclamation. There
was a dignified clinging to orderli-
ness in the way the chairman ran

faithfully tlirough the parliamen-
tary procedures. There was impa-
tience in die nervous creak of the
folding chairs. Men hunched for-
ward, shuffled their feet, caught
themselves and sat still, and then
crouched again. Only Deerbush
sat motionless, by himself in the
back of the room.

“New Business?” the chairman
asked, and immediately recognized
a short, spare, balding man who’d
gotten his hand in the air first. The
man stood up quickly.

“I guess — ” he began. *‘I sup-
pose," he substituted self-conscious-
ly, “we aU know why we’re here.
So there's no use talking about that.
What we're hei’e for tonight is to
try and do something about it.”

"If we can,” another man broke
in.

The first man waved a hand in
sharp impatience. “If we can.
O.K. But — what I was sajing—
We all know each other. I guess
we’ve aU checked with each other.
It looks like my store’s been hit the
worst. Our inventory’s short about
a hundred dollars a week for the
last two months.”

Other men broke in now. The
short man snapped: “Well, maybe
my place isn't the worst. But, by
golly, what’s the difference in the
end? Somebody’s walkin' out with
stuff from every one of our places,
he's been doin’ it for months, we're
goin’ crazy, and we can’t even say
how he’s been doin’ it. And what’s
more, I guess there ain’t a merchant

47

And Then She Found Him

here can stand that kind of stuff
very long. 'Bout the only thing this
feller ain't done yet is rob the bank
— and maybe he’s gettin’ set to do
that, too. The police ain’t findin’
anythirig out, the insurance detec-
tives ain't no better, and neither’s
my store cop. If vee don’t do some-
thin’ soon, this town. — yessir, this
whole town — is gonna be flat on
its back and bankrupt! Now, what-
're we gonna do about it?”

Deerbush grunted to himself. He
reached three fingers into the open
package in his shirt pocket, took
out a pinch of loose tobacco, and
began chewing it thou^tfuUy.

Other men were standing up
now. “All right, Henry. I’m going
crazy over at my place, too. You
say we ought to do something. But
what? Things just disappear. In
broad daylight. No one comes near
them. Stock can’t just float out the
door — but one minute it’s there and
the next it isn’t. I can’t think of
anything to do about that.”

“An’, by the way,” another man
put in, “I figure we’d be six weeks
closer t’an answer if all you didn’t
keep shut t'each other about it that
long. What’s the good of this ’Socia-
tion if we got t’read about these
things in t’paper?”

“I didn’t notice you standin’ up
and savin’ anythin’, Sam Frazer,”
the spare man answered testily. “I
don’t mind admittin’ I wasn’t in a
hurry to look foolish. Then I found
out it wasn’t just my place. But I
guess after ffiat I didn’t try to make

out I'm so smart, callin’ down my
fellow merchants in this commu-
nity. You just sit down, Sam, and
let the rest of us work this out.
Before it gets to be more’n we can
handle.”

“We can’t handle it now.” The
man who spoke hadn't said any-
thing up to now. Deerbush had no-
ticed him earlier hunched forward
in the first row, a scorching ciga-
rette held gingerly between liis
fingertips. He went on doggedly, in
spite of his obvious embarrassment.
“This isn’t shoplifting as anyone
has ever heard of it before. I’ve
checked this with the men from my
insurance company, and I’ve talked
to Chief Christensen. I’m — I’m al-
most inclined to believe it’s human-
ly impossible to be robbed in this
particular way.”

Deerbush fingered his nose
again, and sat up straight. But
nothing was made of that half-idea,
and the man who’d brought it up
had nothing more to say.

It ended widi the Association’s
deciding on offering a reward. It
was a patently useless move, but
it was something to put on the rec-
ord. 'The meeting broke up linger-
ingly, with men snapping at each
other and at nothing.

By then, Deerbush had a fair
picture of things. More and more
it became obvious that he'd been
right in calling the newspaper stor-
ies to Stannard’s attention.

The last man to leave the hall
put the lights out and locked the

48

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

door behind him. Deerbush stood
up and shucked out of his trench-
coat. Rolling it into a pillow, he
took off his hat, stretched out on the
floor, and went to sleep.

It was almost noon when he
woke up. He got to his feet, ran
his fingers through the thin, gray-
brown hair left on his shiny scalp,
and brushed off his suit with a few
swipes of his palms. He looked out
through the windows.

Outside, he saw Broad Street in
the light of a brightly sunny day,
with cars moving up and down the
street and shoppers going into
stores. But there were policemen on
duty at every corner, and they neg-
lected the traffic in favor of stealth-
ily watching the people on the side-
walks. People-like, the shoppers evi-
dently had not yet let a few stories
in the weekly paper really sink in.
But Deerbush could see one or two
pedestrians looking at the police
with sudden reali^tion. It was a
small town. Once started, it would-
n't be many days, or hours, before
the panic he’d seen in this hall last
night would osmose out from be-
hind ihe store counters, puddle up,
and begin to choke the whole town.

He settled his hat on his long,
narrow skull, folded the trenchcoat
over his arm and left the hall. He
was thinking Stannard had better
clean this up today if he could.

Stannard was waiting for him
on tlie corner of Broad and Fau-
quier streets. They walked slowly
along togeffier, hugging the edge of

the sidewalk, while Deerbush gave
his report. Occasionally people
bumped into them, and always
moved on without apologizing.
Whenever it happened, Stannard
would grimace. Deerbush paid it
no attention.

Stannard nodded slowly when
the report was finished. “I think
tliat confirms it,” he said in liis pa-
tient voice. ‘Tfou agree, don’t you,
Todd?”

‘We never had one of us turn
out to be a criminal up to now,”
Deerbush answered, intending it
to be no more than a comment.

Stannard turned to him patient-
ly. “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened
before, Todd. You must remember
the pressures and strains that arise
in us from being as we are. Bear
in mind that it’s incredible tliat any
of us, let alone most of us, grow
up to be mature personalities.”

“Sure, Frank. I didn’t mean to
say anything special by it. It’s just
that this kind of tiring hasn’t hap-
pened up to now.”

“Of course, Todd. And I appre-
ciate your getting help from some-
one else, instead of trying to han-
dle it by yourself.”

Deerbush shrugged uncomfort-
ably. He knew very well that Stan-
nard and the other people of his
kind, back in Chicago, were all of
them brainier than he was. The
people at the top of the organiza-
tion, like Stannard, were almost as
much different from Deerbush as
he was from most people. Maybe

And Then She Found Him

49

more. They seemed to live a dif-
ferent kind of life, inside — restless,
tense; like people trying to climb
out of a cage. Deerbush had thought
about it for a long time, and de-
cided it was because they could al-
ways spare a part of their brains for
remembering the spot they were in.

He and Stannard walked along,
and toward one o'clock diey stopped
at a diner next to the city hall.
They finally got seats at the crowd-
ed counter after, missing their turn
twice, and then they waited a long
time for the waitress to get their
order. Stannard toyed with his fork.
Deerbush was accustomed to this
kind of thing, being among other
people much more often: he called
out their order as the waitress
passed by, trusting to her training
to leave it stuck in her mind. In
time she came back along the coun-
ter, carrying two plates and looking
up and down the row of customers.

"Hot roast beef and a ham on
white?”

"Right here, Miss,” Deerbush
said in a deliberately loud, firm
voice. She set the plates down in
front of them automatically, with-
out looking at tliem. She was an
attractive woman, near Deerbush's
own age, with laughter lines at the
comers of her mouth. Deerbush
looked at her with almost naked
hope in his eyes. But there was no
disappointment in him when she
turned away without ever having
looked at the man behind this one
of a row of faces.

Stannard looked at him, shaking
his head. “Isn’t your own kind good
enough for you?” he said with gen-
tle pointedness.

Deerbush shrugged uncomfort-
ably. He ate quickly, left an over-
sized tip, went out, and waited for
Stannard on the sidewalk.

They set a rendezvous, divided
the town between them, and sepa-
rated. Deerbush began walking
along the streets south of Fauquier,
turning casually into each store for
a minute or two. Each time, he
could smell the mute panic, thick
as sour honey, clogging the air. Ev-
ery place was the same; full of pale
cleriB who forced smiles at dieir
customers and jerked dieir heads
every time the door opened. But
no one ever noticed him — no one
stopped him to ask what he was
doing. He moved along, stepping
out of everyone’s way, gathering ur-
gency from the look of the people
he saw.

Two o’clock found him w'alkmg
quickly. By now he knew which
stores had been hardest hit, and he
thought he saw the pattern in the
shoplifter’s work. He wondered if
Stannard mightn’t have seen it some
time ago, and possibly finished their
job already. . . .

He walked into The Maryland
Company — "The Complete Depart-
ment Store” — and began moving
back and forth along the aisles.

It was worse here than anjwhere
else in his half of town. The clerks
were worked up to an edge of des-

50

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

peratioQ that made them dig tlieir
pencil-points into their sales re-
ceipts and fumble at change-mak-
ing until the customers caught the
infection too. No one talked in a
normal tone of voice.

He saw how many people tliere
were who stood motionless and
went over everybody with their eyes,
and that told him how frightened
the insurance companies were. And
there was a stock-taking crew, mov-
ing hurriedly from counter to.count-
er, making spot-checks — not quite
at random.

They’d seen the pattern, too.
Deerbush nodded to himself at the
ef&ciency of the system, even
though it couldn’t ever catch this
special thief.

He went to the Misses’ Dress
Department. There were more
tensely idle people concentrated
around it than any%vhere else in the
store. Deerbush stopped, leaned
against a pillar, and waited, ig-
nored. And eventually, almost at
closing time, he saw her.

She walked into the department
with a number of packages already
under her arm; a tall, pale, thin-
nish girl. Her brown eyes were
large, her nose was short and up-
turned. Her lips were pursed in a
cupid’s bow. Her hair was short and
black, carefully dressed, with just
the faintest dusting of silver at the
tips. She moved lightly — not grace-
fully, as grace is taught, but with
quick, unsettled movements that
reminded Deerbush of a small

young bird. Her gown was pale
pink and summery, with bows at
the shoulders and a ruffle of thick
petticoats at the hem. Except for the
deep creases in her forehead and the
sharp definition of her hps, it might
have been easy to mistake her age.

Her glance swept the dress racks
and adjoining accessory counters.
She looked at handbags, her lower
lip caught between her teeth, and
shook her head. She pivoted on one
heel. The detectives all looked past
her, preoccupied.

Deerbush was sure.

He watched her approach the
dress racks and begin lifting things
out. After a moment, she went over
to the saleswoman, who was pick-
ing nervously at a floss of lint on
her skirt.

“Hello,” she said sofdy.

The saleswoman came to life.
Her face lit in a warm smile that
was all the more strange for the
abstracted look in her eyes. Deer-
bush grunted explosively.

‘"Why, hello there, miss!” she
beamed fondly. “My, that's a pretty
frock!” And still, Acre was some-
thing vague in her expression.

The girl dimpled. “Why, thank
you!” she smiled. And the detec-
tives continued to ignore her, just
as they ignored Deerbush.

Now the girl twined her fingers
behind her back and bowed her
head, blushing. “But you have so
many other pretty ones here,” she
whispered shyly.

"Why, bless you, dear, do you

51

And Then SJie Found Him

mean you’d like to have some of
them?” The saleswoman looked con-
trite for not having thought of it
sooner. But Deerbush could see
something trapped in the saleswom-
an’s eyes. Something that knew
there was a wrong thing going on,
but couldn’t get its knowledge
through.

“Oh! Could I?” the girl in the
summery dress exclaimed, clapping
her hands together. “They’re so
beautiful!”

“Of course, dear,” the saleswom-
an soothed. “Here — come with me
— here’s where the really nice ones
are. You just pick out the ones you
like.”

Deerbush watched wonderingly.
The girl lifted dress after dress off
the racks, holding each against her-
self and turning in front of the big
floor-length mirrors. She never
looked directly at her own face —
only at the dresses. Deerbush bad
the feeling she was too self-con-
scious to be caught admiring her-
self.

Finally, she and the saleswoman
had chosen a group of dresses.

"Thank you very much!” the girl
breathed.

“I'm glad you like them, my
dear,” tlie saleswoman said, smiling
warmly. "Please come back again.”
And still there was something lost
and trapped in her expression, but
it was very faint.

The detectives stayed watchful,
but all of them seemed to have
found something — a curled edge in

the carpeting, or a turning over-
head fan — that kept attracting their
attention.

“I’ll come back,” the girl said.
"I promise.” She turned to go, hold-
ing the dresses. "Goodbye!”

“Goodbye, dear,” the salesgirl
said. She smiled fondly, if vaguely,
and drifted back behind her count-
er. She looked down at her skirt,
began scraping harshly at the fabric.

The girl in the summery dress
moved slowly tow'ard the doors,
browsing as she went, stopping at
an occasional counter to look over
the merchandise. Once she w^aited
while a floorwalker stepped ab-
stractedly out of her way.

Deerbush moved after her. He
heard a sound behind him and felt
it raise the hackles of his neck. He
spun his head around. The stock-
taking crew was in the Misses’
Dress Department and the sales-
woman was doubled over her count-
er, sobbing hysterically. “No — no,”
she was saying, “there wasn’t any-
body here.”

A man held the front doors open
for the girl in the summery dress.
Deerbush was on the street only
yards behind her, brushing by the
store detective who unobtrusively
blocked die exit. He foflowed her
as she turned off the main street
away from the shopping areas, and
he couldn’t make sense out of what
he’d seen.

But that didn’t matter so much
— the important thing was that he'd
found her.

52

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

He could tell she’d never had
anyone follow her before in her life.
She never looked about her. When
she turned off into a tree-lined side
street, Deerbush stepped up beside
her.

He walked there for perhaps
twenty steps before she turned her
head and looked at him, frowning
a little. She peered at him with
puzzled eyes. "You’re different,”
she said.

“It’s all right,” Deerbush said,
trying not to frighten her. "My
name’s Todd Deerbush and I’m not
going to hurt you. I’d like to walk
along with you for a while.”

She stopped still. “You’re differ-
ent,” she repeated. "You’re like me.”
Maybe, Deerbush thought. "I
don’t Imow,” he said.

She began walking again, finally,
the dresses forgotten in her arms,
puzzling over it. ‘Tou noticed me,”
she said after a while, her mind
made up. “All by yourself. Nobody
else ever did. You must be real too.”
“I don’t know what you mean
by that,” Deerbush said gently.
"But people don’t notice me, either.”
She nodded firmly. “Unless you
make them. You're real ... I
never thought anybody else but me
was real.”

"I guess there’s quite a few,”
Deerbush answered, thinking that
there was none exactly like her.
"But it’s hard to tell. Might be some
in every town. Far's I know, I'm
with the only bunch that’s gotten
together.”

"Are there tliat many of us?”

“Well,” he said, "there’s more
than fifty in this bunch I’m in.”

They walked a little farther.
They were in a very good neighbor-
hood now, with big houses and wide
lawns. She turned toward him
again, and looking at her he realized
she'd been preoccupied all the
while. “What makes us real, Todd?”

He still didn’t know what she
might mean by that. He tried to
answer her as best he could. “Stan-
nard — that’s one of our real smart
people; you better ask him for the
answers — Stannard says we broad-
cast — like a TV station, he says —
something like that; it’s out of my
league — that makes us not be no-
ticed. It works inside people’s
heads.” He felt he was making him-
self sound confused and stupid. He
couldn’t help it, and he was used
to it.

“That’s not what I asked you,
Todd. That’s what happens first.
Cut after a while you can make
people notice you and be nice to
you. But they can’t do it to you.
That proves you’re real and they’re
just . . . something else. But
what does it?”

‘The same kind of thing, I
guess,” he answered lamely. He was
trying to find out more from her
than she could from him, and he
didn't know what to do about it.
Stannard might— but for some rea-
son Deerbush found himself not
wanting Stannard in this right
now. "Stannard says it’s protection.

Avd Then She Found Him

53

He says Mother Nature's working
out a new kind of creature in us,
and doesn’t W'ant us to get hurt.
But she kind of overdid it.”

His voice was gentle. He thought
of her growing up in tliis town,
with the broadcast growing stronger
and stronger as she grew; wonder-
ing why the boys didn’t have any
interest in her, wondering why ev-
eryone acted so strange. He could
see the puzzled little child with the
tear-streaked face, and the hurt
teen-ager who came later, having
to separate from her family if she
was to live at all . . . and then
the woman, blooming somehow in
spite of everything, and beginning
to fade. . . , OMy she’d foimd
something.

A warm and exciting thing was
happening to Deerbush. He felt he
was really coming to understand
her. He’d been no different, before
he had the idea of setting himself
up in this land of work. Twenty
years of li\ing a settled life had
let him strike a balance with him-
self and get along with what he
was. But when he looked at the
girl; thin, pale, worn and terribly
lonesome, he could understand how
it would be for her.

Except that it wasn’t the same,
he reminded himself. She had some-
thing else.

But, looking at her, he couldn’t
see it. He could only see, under her
eyes, the hollows that makeup
couldn’t quite take out.

‘TVhere’re you from, Todd?”

“Chicago, now.”

“I’ve alw'ays wanted to see places
like that. I suppose I could.” She
touched her upper teeth to her lower
lip. "But I kneiv I was real as
long as I stayed here.”

They reached a trimmed hedge
with a white picket gate set in the
middle of it, and a walk going up
to a white house with window boxes
and ruffled white curtains in the
windows.

“My name is Viola Andrews,”
she said. “I live here. Would you
like to come inside and visit widi
me?”

She showed him through the
house. The living room was full of
beautifully carved, heavy walnut
furniture, with overstaffed divans
and easy chairs. There were stand-
ing lamps with beautifully deco-
rated shades, and delicate end-ta-
bles with china figurines on them.
The kitchen had an electric mix-
er, a toaster, a rotisserie, an electric
frying pan, a dishwasher, big re-
frigerator, and freezer.

As she showed him from room to
room, she held his arm. Her grip
grew tighter, and her voice more
excited. “I can’t get over it, Todd.
Someone else like me! Aren’t these
chairs pretty? I had some others,
but then 1 saw these, and I had
diem sent over right away. I’ve done
that with most of my furnishings —
there are so many nice things in
the stores. But tell me some more
about yourself, Todd, please. I’m
dying to know aU about you. How

54

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

were you when you were a litde
boy? Was it as terrible for you as
it was for me?”

“I don’t know, Vi.” He felt more
and more awkward as she clung to
his arm and led him from room to
room.' Her bedroom had gilded an-
tique furniture, with delicate
French dolls propped up on satin
pillows over the pink bedspread.
The dining room had cupboards
full of fragile, china and sculptured
silver cutlery.

"Isn’t it all beautiful? Oh, Todd,
I’m getting more and more excited
by Ae minute! I can't get over
you!”

Suddenly she stopped. Her fin-
gers dug into his arm. “It was aw-
ful, Todd,” she said intently. "After
I left my parents, I still tried so
hard to be like other girls. I had to
. . . not pay ... for my food all
of the time, but I tried in every-
thing else. And then, one day not
long ago, I was tw^ty-five.” She
touched an embroidered handker-
chief to the comers of her eyes. "I
suddenly realized I was going to be
alone forever, for as long as I lived.
Other girls were married, they had
families, they had all the tilings
a girl needs — and I was never, nev-
er going to have them. It was like
a deep black closet with myself
crouched in the very far comer, and
no way out.

“I — I didn't know what to do.
I had to make somebody notice me.
I was ready to die if somebody did-
n’t. And — and — ” her voice sud-

denly rose, “and one day, I couldt
1 didn’t know how, but I just couldl
I didn’t have to be a thief any
longer. I didn’t just have to get
along on as little as I could. I
could make people like me, and pay
attention to me, and give me pres-
ents.”

Just as suddenly, she bowed her
head. “But they’re just pretending,
and I know it,” she whispered.
"They’re not real. They don’t really
see me or like me. They forget me
just as soon as I go away.”

She straightened and took her
hand from his arm. She touched
an embroidered handkerchief to the
comers of her eyes. “I'm so glad you
came to help me that I can't even
put it into words; but I am glad,
Todd.”

Deerbush shook his head. He’d
been pretty badly worried v'hen he
first read the newspaper stories. But
it wasn’t that one of his oivn kind
of people had turned out bad, which
was what he’d been afraid of at
first. It was just this girl, scared,
trying to fill in what she'd been
missing. He put his arm around her
shoulders.

“Listen, Vi,” he said, "best thing
to do's get you out of here as quick
as we can, and get you with your
own kind of people.”

"Thank you, Todd,” she said in
her breathless voice. ‘Tou’re very
nice to me.” She hugged him im-
pulsively.

“Listen — ” he said, trying to
think of how to tell her what he

And Tlien She Found Him

wanted to. “Vi — see, what I am,
is a marriage broker.”

“A marriage broker?”

“Uh — yes — see, what It says I
am in the Chicago Classified is a
private investigator. People never
see me. They just call up the AA
Agency on the phone, and I mail
’em reports on tlie people they want
to find out about. That’s how I
make my living. But what I really
do, for this bunch of our people,
is go around the country looking
for more. And when I find one, I
try and fit them to somebody else
that hasn't got a husband or wife.
It’s a thing I figured out to do, so
I could be somebody useful.”

That had been the easy part.
Now he was stopped again.

He wished he was smarter, so he
could know what was wrong with
Vi. He knew there was something
wrong, something that somebody
like Stannard could put his finger
on in a minute. But he knew too
that it didn’t matter. Underneath
it, she wasn’t bad, or vicious. She
didn’t do these things because she
was mean. She was gentle, and
hurt, and lost. If a man had time,
he could bring out the good things
in her. A man who understood her,
and took care of her, and was pa-
tient with her, could do it.

‘'Vi — what I mean, is. I’ve found
plenty of women for oAer men. I
liked a lot of them — I’m not trying
to fool you about that — but I never
. . . What I mean, is, these wom-
en all had a lot on the ball. And the

55

other men in this bimch’re a lot
more deserving. They sort of be-
longed together, and I knew it.”
He stopped to listen to what he’d
said, and went red. “I don’t mean,”
he blurted, “you don’t stack up to
’em. I don’t mean tliat at aU, Vi.
You're a lot smarter than me, and
I know it. I’m not much. But what
I mean, is, I’ve always taken these
women back to Chicago with a man
in mind for them. But — ” He
reached out for her hands. “Not tliis
time.” He didn't sound like himself.

“Vi — I’m not much, and I don’t
have much. I do work that’s bound
to keep me away from home a lot,
and with people like us that’s going
to be extra hard on you, but — ”

“Oh, Todd,” she said, coloring,
“I'm the happiest girl in the world!”
He couldn't believe it. He stood
looking at her, holding her hands,
and for a long moment he couldn’t
get it through his head. Then he
felt warmth all through him, and
he had to close his eyes for a min-
ute because he was smiling as hard
as she was.

“We better get going as soon as
we can,” he said, “try and get a
start while it’s still daylight. We’ve
still got to pick up Stannard, and
my car. So I'll ask you to pack fast.
Better just take one suitcase.”

She pulled sharply away from
him. “One suitcase? You mean-
leave all my nice things?”

He’d knovm it coxildn’t last.
"Well — sure, Vi. They don’t belong
to you . .

56

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

She stamped her foot in anger.
“Leave all my presents? 1 won't!
I won’t do it!”

“Vi,” he said patiently, *you*ve
got to.”

"No!”

“Look, Vi, feeling that way does-
n’t make sense. You took that stuff.
Somebody’s stuck for the money
somewhere. But it's not just that.
You’ve got this town scared; you’ve
got it scared so bad these people're
going to stampede and hurt them-
selves. They’re ready for it — it’s
plain as day, all over town. You
want something like that on your
conscience?

"If you leave the stuff here, that’ll
take care of it. They’ll find it after
a while, and they’ll decide it was
a smart crook. It’ll be a' puzzle for
them, but it won’t be building up
anymore. They’ll have their stuff
back and after a while they’ll forget
about it — if it never happens any-
where again.

“And even if you don’t think
they’re real anyhow — the stuff still
doesn’t belong to you. You didn’t
earn it.”

‘Tou’re awful!” she shouted at
him. ‘Tou're mean and awful. I
don’t like you at all. You hate me.
Get out of here!”

“Vi—”

“I hate you! I hate you!” She
pulled her hands back awkwardly
and hit him with the heels of her
fists. “I won’t give you up my nice
presents! I won’t! I like getting
presents — I want lots of nice things

to have! I want lots of nice tilings—
I want a lot more than I have! And
I don’t like you! Get away from me!
Go away! Go away!”

Deerbush sighed. "All right, Vi.”
“I’m going to go downtown and
get more nice things — lots more.
And don’t you try and stop me!”

“I’m sorry, Vi,” he said in a voice
that had no life in it, “but it looks
like I better come back in a hurry.”

Walking quickly toward his ren-
dezvous with Stannard, he saw po-
lice cars cruising the streets. The
men inside them drove slowly, their
heads turning as they looked at ev-
ery pedestrian except Deerbush. He
noticed they were paying special at-
tention to the women, and he was-
n't too surprised. But they'd never
find her. They might come and
knock on her door, and maybe even
talk to her, but they’d never find
her. It would just get worse and
worse.

He wondered how bad it could
get. After the first stores had to
close — or if Vi began going into
people’s houses — what would these
people living here in this town do?
Would they be wearing guns here
in this town, looking back over their
shoulders all the time, locking ev-
erything up? And still losing things?
And if it came to the militia and
martial law, or the state police or
F.B.L, and they still lost things —
what then?

A car up the street jammed on
its brakes. The doors flew open,

57

And Then S)ie Found Him

and tlie detectives inside jumped
out on the sidewalk. They ran up
to a startled plump woman and sur-
rounded her. One of them flashed
a badge for an instant. The others
had already grabbed the packages
out of her arms and were tearing
them open. The woman looked
from one to anotlier of them, her
face white, her mouth twisted by
shock.

There was nothing Deerbush
could do to help her. He stood
watching it, cursing in a voice so
low he didn't hear it. But he could-
n’t help feeling a little jolt of relief
as he thought nothing like that
could ever happen to Viola.

"I wish I’d found her,” Stannard
sighed as they drove toward Viola’s
house.

“I shouldn’t have said I wanted
her to come to Chicago.” Deerbush
said. What hadn’t worked out be-
tween him and Vi was a personal
thing, and a private hurt, but what
he’d done was make trouble for ev-
erj'body.

‘Tou couldn’t know tliat, Todd,”
Stannard was telling him. ‘Tou had
no way of guessing. She was some-
thing brand new to 5'ou — brand
new to anyone, for that matter, in
this variation. You're quite right —
they’d never find her. Between the
curiosity-damping field, and this
new ability that seems to spring di-
rectly from her anrested emotional
development, it’s — well, it’s more
than fortunate that I came here
with you.” He stared out at the

dark street for a moment. “It’s a
horrible shame she’s so completely
crippled, has so little moral stami-
na in her makeup. But what an
ability! Intelligently, maturely used
— you realize, don’t you, Todd,
that this could easily be the answer
to the problem of the damping field?
I’m afraid she’s past hope, but if
we could learn it from her . . .
Well, that makes no difference. We
can always raise her children apart
from her, so the}'’!! have her hered-
ity but not her hysteria."

"I guess we could,” Deerbush
said.

"She didn’t tell you what it is
she does?”

Deerbush shook his head.
“Sounded like- she doesn’t know,
herself. She just does it. People —
people give her presents.”

"She simply wishes people would
obey her, and that’s all? She walked
up to this saleswoman, you say, and
caused tlie woman to give her the
dresses.”

“I know. But the woman wanted
to”

"And had hysterics afterward,
claiming she knew nothing about
it. Well, tliat part’s the damping
field, taking hold again after what-
ever else it was had done its work.
W’ould you describe to me, again,
this expression you say you saw on
die clerk’s face? It sounds to me as
though there might be something
valuable in that . .

They were in front of Viola’s
house. “No lights,” Deerbush said.

58

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

feeling almost glad. "She’s gone.
We'll have to look for her." Now
Stannard would have to keep quiet,
and leave him alone.

Stannard was peering at the dark
house. "Do you think she’ll come
back here? We have to find her
quickly. I want her in Chicago as
fast as we can bring her, and I
want her isolated from human be-
ings before she has half the world
giving her things and the other half
howling for her blood.”

"We’ll find her. We just have to
go down along the shopping street.”
I wish I was the richest man in the
world, he thought.

They drove back toward the main
street, both of them quiet. They
passed a police car, its spotlight fin-
gering the sidewalks.

“The stores aren’t open late to-
night,” Stannard said.

"1 don’t think that’s going to
make any difEerence.” They turned
onto the main street. It lay empty
but guarded, most of the storefronts
lit by night lights, the parking
spaces bare along the curbs except
for places where occasional men —
insurance detectives, Deerbush
guessed — sat in plain cars reading
newspapers. Foot patrolmen walked
silendy from door to door, each
with only one block for his beat,
trying locks. A radio car rolled up
the street to the intersection that
marked the end of the double row
of stores, made a U turn, came
down to die intersection of Broad
Street and Riverside Avenue, made

another U turn, and rolled up the
street again.

At the corner of Broad and Fau-
quier, where The Milady Shop was
located, Viola stood waiting while
a middle-aged man fumbled at die
shop door with his keys.

“Is that she?” Stannard asked.

Deerbush nodded. “That’s her.”
He eased the car to a stop at the
curb.

“I’ll talk to her,” Stannard whis-
pered.

Viola was intent on the man
opening the shop door, but she
turned her head as Deerbush and
Stannard hurriedly crossed the side-
walk toward her.

The shopkeeper was paying nei-
ther of them any attention. He had
the door open now, and he spoke
to Viola. “There you are, litde hon-
ey. Now, I told you it wouldn’t
take but a minute or two, didn’t I?”

Viola took an indecisive step to-
ward the door. Her face was cloud-
ed up angrily, and when they were
close, she said in a low, angry
voice, “You get away from me, you!”

Stannard whispered to Deer-
bush: “My God, she’s acting like a
five-year-old!”

Deerbush thought of how sensi-
tive and delicate she was, and how
helpless she’d be without this extra
something she could do.

“Something wrong, little honey?”
the shopkeeper asked Viola, his
voice full of concern.

“Make them go awayl” Viola
cried, stamping her foot.

And Then She Found Him

“Make who go away, little hon-
ey?”

“Can’t you see them? You see
them. See them and make them go
away!”

"Miss Andrews — ” Stannaid be-
gan.

Deerbush was looking at the
shopkeeper. He had never seen any-
one try so hard to do something
that ought to be so easy. He and
Stannard weren’t invisible. But the
shopkeeper advanced uncertainly,
brushing his hands in front of him
like a man going into a long hall
full of cobwebs. Then his fingertips
touched Stannard. For just a sec-
ond, he almost did the impossible
because Viola had asked him to.
His eyes looked into Stannard’s face
and Deerbush could see them al-
most begin to focus. But then the
shopkeeper’s head lolled forward on
his chest and he stumbled back
.against his window. He leaned on
the glass, his lips slack, looking at
nothing. His breathing became shal-
low and monotonous.

“I hate you!” Viola spat at him .
‘Tou don’t like me!”

“Miss Andrews — ” Stannard said
again. He was pale as he looked at
the shopkeeper.

Viola pointed at Deerbush. ‘You
help me,” she said to Stannard.
"Make him leave me alone!”

A foot patrolman passed by them,
turned to the door of the next shop,
tested the lock, and went on.

Stannard was motionless, staring
at her.

59

Then Stannard said to her:
'Don’t worry, dear — everything’s
fine. Everything’s all right. I’ll take
care of you. You don’t have to wor-
ry.” His voice was soothing, and
only someone who knew Stannard
as well as Deerbush did could have
noticed the peculiar note it struck,
as if somewhere, too deep in his
throat to win the fight, something
was trying to choke off the words.

He turned suddenly and tried to
hit Deerbush.

"Oh, thank you!” Viola ex-
claimed. ‘Tou’re nice. You’ll get rid
of the nasty man for me.”

Deerbush felt the blow on his
shoulder. He tried to get a hand on
Vi’s arm before she could run away,
but he couldn’t with Stannard be-
tween them. He elbowed Stannard
back, but he had to drop his shoul-
der to do it. Stannard swung again,
and this time he split Deerbush’s
cheek.

Deerbush shook his head sharply.

“Get away from her,” Stannard
panted. “Stop bothering her!” Viola
took two quick steps forward and
pushed her hands against Deer-
bush’s chest.

"You stay away from my pres-
ents,” she mumbled angrily.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” Deerbush
said. He stepped back, holding one
of Vi’s wrists now, and with the
other hand he hit Stannard hard
on the jaw. As Stannard fell down,
Vi began to scream.

Deerbush held her wrists for a
long moment while she kicked and

60

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

kicked at his legs. He looked at
Stannard, lying on the sidewalk,
and saw the man’s eyes start to flut-
ter open.

He let go of Vi’s wrists and
reached with his hands, drawing up
his shoulders and lowering his face
to protect it from her fingernails.
‘Tm sorry, Vi.”

Deerbush waited until the police
car had rolled by. Then he pulled
his old sedan away from the curb,
and pointed the car toward the edge
of town, driving with both hands on
the wheel and only vaguely feeling
the hurt places in the skin of his
face.

Stannard was sitting hunched in
the seat beside him. He rubbed his
jaw. “It was incredible,” he mum-
bled. “I never for a moment con-
sidered that she might be able to
use her ability on one of us.”

“All right,” Deerbush said.

“I’ll never forget it. I knew what
she was. I didn’t change my judg-
ment of her by one iota before she
spoke to me. And then, suddenly,
she was the most wonderful person
in tlie world. She desen^ed every-
thing anyone could offer her. It was
right that she be made happy. It
was unthinkable that any thin g
should be permitted to interfere
with her wishes. I would have laid
doTVTi my life for her.”

"All right, Stannard,” Deerbush
said. He was blinking, and search-
ing the sides of the road with his
eyes. He wished Stannard would
be still.

“No — no, it’s not all right.” Stan-
nard shook his head. "Can you im-
agine what would have happened?
If she could make me obey her, she
could make any of us obey her.
God! Suppose we’d succeeded in
getting her to Chicago! Fifty of us,
all her slaves. You never coxild have
stopped it. We’d all have been
against you.” Stannard twisted
around to stare fascinated into the
back seat, where Deerbush had gen-
tly laid Vi down. “You were right
to do that, Todd, You were never
more right in anything in your life.”

Deerbush was more tired than he
had ever been. He felt haunted, and
he knew that that was something he
would never lose.

He saw the church beside tlie
road, its spire and walls a flat bulk-
ing shape in the darkness, solid only
where the edge of his headlight
beam touched the weathered brown
shingles. He stopped the car and
got out. He opened the trunk and
then walked over to the rusted pipe
railing that ran around tlie church-
yard. He stood there for a little
while, and then he went back to
the opened trunk of the car. He
came around to Stannard carrying
a hubcap he’d pried loose with the
big screwdriver from the tool box,
and the flat steel top of tlie box
itself.

“Here,” he said. “We can use
these to dig witli.”

Stannard got imsteadily out of
the car. “She was like a petulant
child,” he said. “It was love she

And Theft She Found Him

demanded. Absolute, complete
love.”

Deerbush tlinist the hubcap into
his hands. “Here,” he said. “We'd
better get this done. And quit harp-
ing on it."

“Yes,” Stannard said vaguely.
"Of course. Deerbush — what could
stave off a demand like that? Why
couldn’t she get to you?”

“The love she got from you and

61

the others,” Deerbush said, “was a
reBection of her love for herself.”
He leaned over into the back
seat and lifted Vi out, holding her
with all the gentleness he had. He
cradled her in his arms.

“All her life she looked for it — ”
he said, giving Stannard the an-
swer — “for just one person who
could really love her. . . , And then
she found him.”

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Aces Loaded

by THEODORE R. COGSWELL

Bull stepped forward and put out his hand. ''Come on, honey . «

The redhead's eyes narrowed, and she fired— a need/e beam
burned a neat ffiree-/nch ho/e in the bulkhead behind Bull.

Bull's hand and jaw dropped— he hod thought the redhead was on hJs side.

Bull whistled happily as he
sauntered down the Diagonal, the
wide thoroughfare that slashed
through the sprawling cluster of
bars and dance halls ringing the
spaceport of Engstrum IV. In his
diroat was the rasping dryness that
comes to a man after months in
deep space, and in his billfold a
thick sheaf of inter-Galactic credit
notes. Tomorrow would be time
enough to start shopping around
for a used ship and some prospect-
ing tools. Tonight . . . tonight
was for catching up on all the
things he had missed during fifteen
months of piloting a Consolidated
Metals scow.

An oversized sign blinked from
a large building backed up against
the spaceport fence and he crossed
the street and went in. The bar was
roaring and a whirring clatter came
from the complex gambling devices
that lined three sides of the large
room. In an alcove at the rear were
crowded dice and card tables. He

felt the old temptation stirring in-
side him but he fought it off. This
time things were going to be dif-
ferent. This time he had it all fig-
ured out. The next time he headed
out for the Belt he’d be working for
himself.

He found an empty table and
signaled for a drink. WTien the
waitress came up he took one star-
tled look at her and then let out a
soft whistle. Heart-shaped face,
jade-green eyes that seemed to
slant, close-cropped curly red-gold
hair — all attached to other notice-
able attributes.

“Evening, spacer,” she said. Her
voice was huslty. “What would you
like?”

Bull was a believer in direct ac-
tion, so he told her. She yawned.

“You couldn’t afford it,” she said.
“Someday I wish one of you charac-
ters would come up with a varia-
tion on that theme. Any variation
at aU.”

“Bring me a Double Sun and I’ll

62

63

Aces Loaded

see what I can figure out,” he said.

"You do tliat.” She flipped ofiE to
the bar.

Every time Bull tried a fresh ap-
proach, he tried a .fresh drink. At
last he gave up temporarily, and
somewhat unsteadily wandered to
die rear to watch the crap game.
Before long he was back at his
table, staring with great sadness
down into the dregs of his last
drink. He stifled a sullen hiccup,
and then someone said, "Evening,
son. Mind if I sit dovm?”

Before he could answer, some-
body did, a gnarled man wearing a
faded and patched pair of space-
man’s coveralls. A battered chief
engineer’s hat a couple of sizes too
small perched on steel-grey hair.
Beneath deep-set, faded blue eyes
jutted a beak of a nose and the
points of a lovingly tended handle-
bar mustache.

Bull hiccuped again.

"Best thing for the hiccups is an-
odier drink,” said the old man
with*sympathy. “And since it’s agin
nature for a man to sit drinking
alone, I’ll join you. Beer for me
though, my tubes ain’t what they
once was.” He waved a practiced
hand in the air.

When the redhead appeared
with the drinks, he looked calmly
across the table until Bull grinned,
reached in his pocket, and poured
a small handful of change out be-
tween them. The old man eyed it
happily and then stretched out a
shaky, blue-veined hand.

“Johnston’s the name,” he said.
"Chief Engineer William Johnston
of the Eelican. People who buy me
drinks call me Windy.”

Bull stared at the hand through
out-of-focus eyes and then shook it.
“Brakney. Bull Brakney.”

Windy raised his glass in a silent
salute and drained half of it off at
a single gulp. He said benevolently,
"Got troubles, haven’t you, son?”

Bull nodded morosely.

“I knew it, knew it the minute I
set eyes on you. Wouldn’t be sur-
prised if it was that redhead got
you triggered off.” He snorted fero-
ciously. He waved two fingers at
the little waitress. His eyes followed
her as she went to fill their order.
“Always have been partial to red-
heads,” he said and whinnied like
an aged stallion. "Remember once
out on Altair — that’s when I was
serving a hitch with the Explora-
tion Serrice. I was down by the hy-
droponics shed one day when Major
Kane’s three redheaded daughters
came by. What made it interesting
was that they was triplets, identical
triplets, and I took it as sort of a
personal challenge. Well, sir, there
I was . .

The rush of words began to dis-
solve the alcoholic haze in which
Bull had been trying to hide him-
self. He broke off the old man’s
monologue with an impatient ges-
ture.

‘Women I can handle. Dice I
can’t.” He gestured bitterly at the
busy gambling tables at the rear of

64

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

the Rotunda. “I sevened when I
should have sixed and down the
drain went fifteen months of sweat
as relief pilot on a Consolidated
Metal scow, fifteen months of
pindiing every penny to get enough
of a stake together for a try on my
own. I know a rock out in the Belt
that’s lousy with high-grade tung-
sten pockets, but it takes a good
ship to get in to it and good equip-
ment to dig it out."

W^ith a sweep of his hand he sent
the little pile of coins spinning
across the table. "That’s all that’s
left."

The old man made a clucking
noise. "Hate to tell you this; but,
son, you got took. Nobody gets hot
in tliis place unless Big Head
McCall wants them to."

Bull’s face hardened. ‘Tou level-
ing with me?"

Windy nodded.

The big spaceman slammed his
glass down on the table and then
lurched to his feet, one hand slid-
ing down to grip the butt of the
blaster that hung at his right hip.

As Bull started purposefully to-
ward the dice tables at the rear of
the room the old man jumped up
and grabbed him by the arm.

"Easy does it, boy. You haven*t
got a chance. You’ll just get your-
self chopped dowm for nothing.”
The urgency in die other’s voice
made Bull pause.

'AVhat do you expect me to do,”
he said sullenly, “take this sitting
down?"

"Of course not. But there’s no
sense dealing yourself into a strange
game unless you know what’s be-
hind it. You already tried that and
you see where it got j’ou." Unwill-
ingly Bull let himself be shoved
doivn into the chair.

“You got a better idea?”

Windy nodded. He reached over
and tapped Bull’s tarnished pilot’s
wings. “You got papers to back
those up, haven't you?”

"Sure,” said Bull impatiently.
*Why?”

"Because I haven’t. Mine got
canceled a couple of years ago when
some quack on the fitness board de-
cided I was too old to handle my
own ship.” His voice quivered in-
dignantly. "Me, too old!" With an
effort he caught himself. "Anyway
I’ve been stranded here ever since.
I can't afford to hire a pilot, and
every time I try to talk one into a
partnership deal, he takes one good
look at me and another at my sliip
and then busts out laughing."

He looked hopefuUy across the
table at Bull. “Neither me or the
'Pelican is fresh off the production
line, but we both got a lot of
parsecs left before we’re ready for
die scrap heap. You need a ship, I
need a pilot. Why don’t we take a
flyer at the high grade you men-
tioned and split the profits?”

Bull looked at him dubiously.
'What about equipment? You can’t
strip an asteroid with hand steel
and a four-pound hammer. Mini-
mum gear would run us at least

65

Aces Loaded

five thousand. You got that much
stashed away?”

Windy responded witli a wicked
grin. “No, but I know how we can
raise it in a hurry. And what’s
more it would sort of make up
for the lumps you took back there
tonight."

Bull began to look interested.
“Go ahead.”

“Big Head McCall, the guy who
owns this place, pulled in here five
years ago one jump ahead of the
Patrol. He’d been mixed up in a
hijacking deal in which a Patrol-
man got killed. They got his part-
ner, Cash Shirey — he’s serving life
on one of the penal planets ri^t
now — but Big Head got away with
enough loot to buy off the local offi-
cials once he got here. As a result
the Patrol has never been able to
extradite him. He’s safe as long as
he stays planetside — the Patrol’s
jurisdiction ends at the thousand-
mile-limit — so he just sits down
here and lets the suckers come to
him. Which they do.”

Bull reddened, “^\^at’s all this
got to do with us?” he demanded
impatiently.

"The Patrol doesn’t like cop-
killers. There’s ten thousand on his
head, payable on delivery across the
thousand-mile-limit. And no ques-
tions asked. Interested?”

Bull thought for a moment and
then gestured toward the well-
armed bouncers who were spotted
at strategic spots throughout the
gambling room. “And what are his

guns going to be doing while we’re
trying to talk the boss into taking a
little trip?”

Windy chuckled. “I got it all
worked out. And it’s foolproof. You
get down to the Velhcan tomorrow
morning, help me get her tidied up
for blast off, and I’ll fill you in on
die details.”

Bull wandered around the sal-
vage lot at the far edge of the space-
port for half an hour before he fi-
nally found the Pelican. She was a
small rusty ship with a bulging belly
that gave her tlie appearance of an
adolescent but very pregnant whale.
He sighed and clhnbed in through
her open port. Inside she was even
worse. Unshielded wire festooned
from her bulkheads, half the instru-
ments were gone from her control
panels, and padding from the pi-
lot’s seat hung down in long stream-
ers like Spanish moss.

Bull found the old man in ihe
engine room tinkering with the
bank of equipment that amplified
the images picked up by the fore
and aft scanners and then piped
them into the big vision plate in
the control room.

“Be with you in a second,” he
said as he plugged in the two scan-
ner input leads and then ran a
quick check on die test panel.
“Wanted to be sure I didn't have
those mixed up.” He gave a grunt
of satisfaction as he surveyed his
work. “Looked for a while as if we
were going to have to fly blind. The

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

66

screen magnification control up
forward is burned out but I jury-
rigged up a widget so that it can be
operated from down here. What do
you think of her?” He made an ex-
pansive gesture that took in the
whole ship.

“^Vhy don’t you sell her to a mu-
seum? This is a collector’s item.”

“She’s not as bad as she looks,”
Windy said complacently. “A mite
of tinkering here and there and
she’ll be fit as a fiddle and ready for
work. Why don’t you go forward
and check out the main controls?
rU come up as soon as I finish
grinding the main drive tube in-
jectors. . .

Half an hour later Windy came
up to the control room and slumped
contentedly into the copilot’s seat.

"Everything all right at your
end?" he asked.

“As right as shell ever be,” said
Bull unhappily. “You keep the main
drive going and I’ll fly her some-
how. What’s next on the list?”

“Getting you briefed.” Windy
pulled a piece of paper out of his
pocket and quickly sketched a rough
map. “The back of the Rotunda
butts right up against the spaceport
fence. Between eleven and eleven-
forty both moons are down and it’s
pitch black. While you’re busy in-
side, 111 drift the Pelican over on
her anti-gravs and steering jets and
set her right down on the roof.” He
turned the piece of paper over and
began to sketch again.

“Here’s the inside layout. Big

Head’s office opens off the back of
the main gambling room. There’s
another door to it that leads into a
small corridor that runs along here.”
Hi$ finger moved across the paper.
“At the far end is a narrow stair-
way leading up to tlie roof. There’s
a tliird party involved who will see
all the doors are unlocked. He hesi-
tated, “The reward money’s going
to have to be split three ways. You
don’t mind, do you? We couldn’t
swing this without help from in-
side.”

“Seems fair enough,” said Bull.
“What have you got up j'our sleeve
for me?”

“A pair of aces.” Windy gave a
wicked grin and pulled a battered
metal box out from under the co-
pilot’s seat. When he poured its
contents out on the navigator’s ta-
ble Bull saw a jumbled pile of odd
bits of junk : a few strange coins, a
fused pebble, a tarnished medal, an
obsolete Arnett wrist radiation de-
tector . . .

"Isn’t much to show for fifty
years of shipping out,” said the old
man, “but to me it all means some-
thing. It’s the closest thing I’ve got
to a diary.” While he spoke his fin-
gers wandered from bit to bit and
finally pulled out a small chamois
bag. “Knew I had them here some-
place,” he said, and shook out a
pair of dice. “These come from Big
Head’s own private stock. Here,
give ’em a try.”

Bull rolled them out across the
table several times and then looked

67

Aces Loaded

up quesdoningly. "They look all
right to me.”

"They are . . . now. But
watch.” Windy scooped up the
cubes, placed ^e sides containing
single dots carefully together, and
then slowly so Bull could see what
he was doing, squeezed rhythmi-
cally three times.

“Now try them," he said.

Bull did. Seven. He rolled once
more. Again seven.

“Get the idea?” said Windy.
“That’s how you got taken.”

Bull nodded and then looked
down at the dice dubiously. “I get
it, but if Big Head is the operator
you say he is, 1 can’t see him sitting
stiU while an outsider rings in a
pair of loaded dice on him.” He
picked up the dice and prepared to
roll them again. Windy grabbed his
hand.

“Easy does it, son. I did a little
microengineering on those — sort
of gimmicked the gimmick. Once
they’re turned on they’re only good
for seven passes.”

“And then?"

When Windy finished his ex-
planation Bull didn’t seem overly
enthusiastic. “The whole deal seems
pretty 'iff/ to me,” he said. “WTiat
if they don’t work the way they’re
supposed to?”

Windy made a cheerful hands-
out gesture and gave Bull a fatherly
smile. “If I hadn’t stopped you
from trying to shoot up ihe Ro-
tunda last night you’d have got
killed anyway.”

Bull felt more nervous than he
liked to admit when he stopped in
a little bar a half a block from the
Rotunda, ordered a quick drink,
and carefully spilled half of it down
the front of his space jumper.
When he went into the Rotunda
there was a slight roll to his walk.
Ignoring the complicated gambling
machines tfiat lined the front of
the place, he went straight back to
one of the dice tables and tossed a
bill of sale for the Pelican out on
the green felt.

“How much on this?” He sliured
his words slightly.

The house man picked up die
tide, looked at it disdainfully, and
then tossed it back.

"This is a cash game. We ain’t
running no antique shop.”

Bull jutted his chin aggressively.
"That’s as good as cash. What kind
of a piker joint is this?” He let his
voice rise to an angry bellow. “You
take my roll and then you won’t
give me a chance to get even.”

Three rugged-looking charac-
ters swinging paralizers material-
ized from nowhere. The house man
jerked his thumb toward the door.
“On your way, spacer!”

As the bouncers closed in. Bull
vaulted up on top of the dice table
and jerked out his blaster.

"Action stations!” he shouted.

The spaceman’s trouble cry
brought every off-worlder in the
place to his feet. The bouncers
started to come after him, hesitated
as Bull’s blaster swung toward

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

68

them, and then looked to the house
man for instructions.

“I got cleaned in here last night,”
Bull’s voice boomed out across the
suddenly quiet room. "Now that I
ask for a chance to get it back,
they’re trying to toss me out. What
kind of a clip joint is this? I ain’t
crying about what I lost. All that I
want is a hating chance to get
even.”

The crowd began to growl. Most
of them were spacemen and their
sympathies were obviously with
Bull. Several of the rougher and
drunker of them began to edge to-
ward the table as they scented a
free-for-all. Bull pulled himself
down into a fighting crouch, his
gim trained on the bouncers.

TThe house man made a restrain-
ing gesture to the crowd and whis-
pered softly into a tiny microphone
concealed in his lapel. Head cocked
he listened to an inaudible reply.

“Easy does it,” he said to Bull.
“Let’s see that title again.”

Bull kept his gun pointing to-
ward the bouncers and tossed it
down. The house man smoothed it
out and examined it again, then
whispered in his mike again, and
waited.

“The Boss says a thousand is as
high as he’ll go on a junk heap this
old. Take it or leave it.”

Bull hesitated for a moment and
then bolstered his weapon and
jumped down from the table.

“O.K.,” he growled, "m take it.”

The house man picked up his

dice from the table. “Want fast ac-
tion? rU roll you double or noth-
ing.”

"Suits me. My roll though.”

The other silently handed him
the dice. Bull tossed Aem back.
“This time I brought my own.”
"Don’t you trust ours?” There
was an edge in the house man’s
voice.

"Last time they didn’t work so
well for me. Don’t you trust mine?”
'The gambler took a quick look
at the circle of hard-faced space-
men who had closed in around the
table and then shrugged.

"Sure . , . once I’ve given
them a fast check.” •

"Check away,” said Bull with an
indifference he didn’t feel. The
other rolled them out several times,
noted that a random pattern came
up, and then took them to a cabinet
at the far comer of the room where
he subjected the cubes to an ex-
haustive shaking, weighing, and
measuring. As a final test he threw
them forcefully against the hard
floor, noted the combination that
came up and then rolled them
again. When they didn’t repeat, he
grunted, came back to the dice ta-
ble, and handed them over to Bull.

"Guess they’re all right,” he said
grudgingly.

Bull breathed a silent prayer
that the rough treatment hadn’t
damaged whatever it was that was
concealed inside the dice, scooped
them up, and surreptitiously gave
them the three rhythmic squeezes

69

Aces Loaded

that were supposed to trigger off
their internal mechanisms. He
made the obligatory invocation and
spun the dice across the table.

“Seven come eleven!”

Seven!

Bull felt a wave of relief wash
over him. They were working as
they should. Impassively the house
man slid ten blue chips across to
him.

“Let ’em ride,” said Bull, and
rolled again.

Seven.

More chips were added to the
pile at the edge of the table and
Bull rolled again.

Seven!

The house man’s eyes narrowed
but he didn’t say anything. Bull
rolled again, conscious as he did so
that the three bouncers had pressed
in close behind him.

“Please, babies,” he prayed si-
lently as the white cubes spun out
across the white table, “don’t act up
now.”

Seven!

“I quit!” he said hurriedly. He
reached for the dice with one hand
and the chips with the other. The
house man was ahead of him. He
scooped up the dice and snapped,
"Hold it, Mac!”

Bull started to lunge forward but
froze suddenly as he felt the sharp
nose of a small blaster jab into his
back. His own gun was jerked from
its holster. The house man eyed
him coldly and then rolled the dice
out with an experienced flip.

Seven.

He rolled them again. Again
they sevened. This time when he
spoke into his lapel mike he didn’t
bother to whisper.

“Take him into the back office,”
he said a moment later. “Big Head
wants to have a little talk with
him.”

Big Head McCall, the owner of
the Rotunda, was a thin-faced man
with a crew cut, a disarming smile,
and as far as Bull could make out,
a normal-sized cranium. When Bull
was marched into his office he gave
him a slap on the back and waved
one hand at the small bar that was
built into the far wall.

“Have a drink on the house, old
man. I've got a hunch you’re going
to need it.”

Bull shook his head and stood
waiting tensely as the house man
passed his gun and the dice over to
the owner. Big Head examined the
dice negligently and smiled un-
pleasantly.

"You’re obviously short on
brains, but you must be long on
guts. Trying to take me with a pair
of my own dice is one for the books.
All of which brings up the interest-
ing question of how you happened
to get hold of them. Feel like talk-
ing?”

Bull shook his head sullenly.

Big Head shrugged. "It’s a minor
matter.” He turned to the three
hulking gunmen. “Take him out
die back way and dispose of him.
And when you blast him, let him

70

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

have it in the stomach. It takes
longer that way. Once the word
gets around it will have a salutary
e£Eect on his colleagues.”

Bull suddenly felt himself
grabbed and hustled toward the
rear door of the office. He fought
down a momentary impulse to pan-
ic. If Windy was waiting on the
other side of the door as he was sup-
posed to be, they’d cut him down.
He made a sudden lunge for the
gun that was sitting on Big Head’s
desk but the diree were too quick
for him. He was caught and thrown
violently to the floor. Pain lanced
through him as a heavy boot
slammed into his chest.

“Don’t,” he gasped. "There's
nothing wrong ■with those dice. I
swear it.”

"Is that so?” said Big Head soft-
ly. He thought for a moment and
fficn showed white teeth in a mirth-
less grin. "I'll tell you what I’ll do,
spacer. I’ll roll you for your life.
These things have sevened six
times straight and the odds against
seven in a row are astronomical.
That fair enough?”

Bull got slowly to his feet and
watched tensely as the gambler
rolled the dice out across his glass-
topped desk. Every pair of eyes in
the room — with one exception —
was fixed on them as they spun
across the desk top.

The first cube wavered for a min-
ute and then dropped over on one
side, exposing a single black dot.
The second was spinning on one

comer like a top. Slowly it began to
wobble, finally tumbled to a stop.
Before the watchers could make out
the one dot on the top of the second
die, both cubes exploded. A sudden
soundless flood of actinic light
flashed out like the nova of a small
sun, and then the office echoed to
howls of pain as hands were fu-
tilely dapped against seared eye-
baUs.

Bull quickly locked the door tliat
led into the gambling room and
then scooped up his blaster from
the desk. A soft whisde came from
behind him. He spun around.
Windy was standing in the other
doorway, grinning in delight as he
watched Big Head and his three
henchmen moaning and stumbling
blindly around the room. Beside
him stood the redheaded waitress.
She held a tiny needle gun in her
right hand.

“Meet the silent partner,” Windy
said. "The Pelicans waiting on the
roof. You two haul Big Head up
and get him stowed away. I’ll keep
things under control down here.”

The Pelican’s converters stut-
tered uneasily as Bull meshed the
anti-gravs into lift. He cautiously
eased the control lever forw’ard an-
other notch. The ship seemed to
hunch herself and then with a sud-
den jerk was airborne. Up, up, fifty
feet, a hundred, five hundred, and
then after a stutter that dropped
them a score of yards, her lifters
settled do-wn into a warm con-

Aces Loaded

71

tented hum. The ship swayed gen-
tly as the niglit breeze carried her
out over the dark spaceport.

He was reaching for the hand,
tlirottle when the redheaded girl
came into the control room.

"Windy says everything is set aft.
You can blast when you want to.”
She slid into the copilot's seat and
began to adjust the acceleration
harness with practiced hands.

"Need any help?”

She eyed him coolly. "Not the
kind you’ve got in mind.”

Bull grinned. "I’m still looking
for that variation,” he said. “Hold
your hat.” He set the hand throttle
at one-tenth normal and hit the fir-
ing stud. The cabin lights dimmed
and there was a chatter of circuit
breakers as the main switches threw
open under overload.

"What's going on back there?”
he yelled into the intercom.

“Guess back pressure is damping
the starting arcs,” said Windy’s
voice from the speaker. “Looks like
I didn’t get those injectors as clean
as I thought I did.”

"That’s nice,” said the girl dryly.
"What now?”

“I could try to blow tlie injec-
tors clean.” There was a note of
worry in Bull’s voice. "If I build
enough pressure, sometl^ing’s got to
give.”

"Such as?”

"Well, the injectors might blow
themselves clean. And then again,
the mixing chamber might give out
first. It’s a toss-up.”

"What happens if the mixing
chamber goes?”

'You \von’t feel a thing. It’ll hap-
pen too fast.”

The girl pulled a quarter-credit
piece out of a pocket and flipped it.
“Heads,” she said. “Let’s go.”

"Go it is.” He pulled the throttle
out to two-thirds power. When the
circuit breakers let loose this time,
it sounded as if the whole aft end
of the ship was tearing itself loose.
A stench of scorching insulation
came drifting forward.

Bull felt large wet patches grow-
ing under his arms. “You Imow
something. Red?” he said. “I’m
scared.” And he slammed the throt-
tle all the way over into the red
zone.

“Here goes something!” He
punched the firing stud again .

There was a splintering roar as
the plugged injectors blew clean
and the Pelican scrabbled toward
the heavens on a boiling pillar of
flame. They were two hundred
miles out before Bull, barely con-
scious, was able to inch an enorm-
ously heavy hand toward the cut-off
activator and kill the screaming
planetary drive. The redhead was
unconscious, but she seemed all
right.

"Everything all right aft?” he
said into the intercom.

“Big Head’s got a nosebleed,”
Windy’s voice came back. “Real
blood too, not ice water the way I
figured. Aside from that every-
thing’s fine. I told you there wasn't

72

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

anything wrong with the old girl
that a little tinkering wouldn’t take
care of.”

Bull shook his head groggily.
Tuning the Pelican’s detection gear
to maximum sensitivity, he scanned
a broad arc behind them. There
were no tell-tale blips to indicate
pursuing ships.

“Okay so far,” he said to tlie girl
as she pulled herself painfully out
of tlie acceleration harness.

“VV^hew!” she said with a crooked
smile. “That was rough.”

Bull nodded soberly. “I’m going
down to check on Windy and our
prize cargo. If anything shows up
on the screen you let out a howl
over the intercom. Here, I’ll switch
it on for you.” When he did a fa-
miliar voice came booming through
the speaker.

". . . and there I was with
them three redheaded identical
triplets on my hands. First thing I
did w^as to try and set up some sort
of a rotation system, but they was-
n’t having none of it. They said it
had been share and share alike since
they was born and they didn’t see
no reason for changing now.”

Bull quickly switched the speaker
off and the girl just as quickly
switched it on.

“Sounds interesting,” she said.

'Well, sir,” the voice continued,
“rii admit that for a little while
there I was stumped. I was sup-
posed to meet them down by the
hj’droponics shed at eight, and by
seven-thirty I was getting a mite

desperate. Then suddenly, just
when I was about to give up, it hit
me.” There was a reflective chuckle.
“Worked, too. Yes, sir. Big Head, I
reckon I’m the only man in history
that ever ...”

Bull snapped off the speaker
again and ducked out the door.

“Captive audience,” said Windy
as Bull came into the engine room.
“Been trying to get somebody to sit
through that story for the last t^ven-
ty years and it looks like I’m finally
going to get a chance to finish it.”
He had die gambler propped up
against a bulkhead, with his arms
and legs securely trussed, and an
unkind adhesive-tape gag in place.
There w'as an expression of con-
fused fury in the man’s red and
streaming eyes.

"I think you two have met be-
fore,” said Windy.

A moment later the girl came aft
from the control room. “Nothing
stirring on the plates,” she said. She
examined the gambler with savage
interest. 'Take off his gag, I want
to talk to him.”

Big Head let out a squawk of
pain as the tape was jerked roughly
from his mouth. He licked his
bruised lips, obviously making an
attempt to keep his emotions under
control. Finally he said, “I know
when I’m licked. What’s your ask-
ing price to turn me loose?”

"This isn't a snatch,” said Windy.
“We’re turning you over to die
Patrol.”

That hit hard. "What for?”

73

Aces Loaded

"For ten thousand credits, cash
on the barrelhead.”

"ril give you twenty if you take
me back,” said Big Head quickly.

The redheaded girl stepped for-
ward. Her fists were clinched so
tightly that her knuckles showed
white. "You don’t buy your way out
of this one,” she said in a choked
voice. "Cash Shirey is my father.”

Big Head seemed to shrink sud-
denly.

“You remember Cash, don’t you?”
The question cracked like a whip-
lash. “You remember the partner
you skipped out on — the nice guy
you let take the rap for the patrol-
man you’d gunned down?” She
paused and looked at him with sav-
age satisfaction. “It took me two
years. Big Head, but I finally made
it. Dad’s going to be glad to see
you.”

The gambler’s face froze. But
when he spoke his voice was steady.
“Putting me in won’t get him out.”
He paused for effect and then said
softly, “What if I could get Cash
out from underneath that murder
rap.”

“You couldn’t . . Her voice
caught in her throat.

“But I could.” He looked at her
calculatingly. “A voluntary confes-
sion would do it.”

Windy held up a cautioning
hand. “Watch it, kid, he’s slippery.”
“Look,” said the gambler earnest-
ly, “I’ve got everything to gain and
nothing to lose. The Patrol can’t
touch me as long as I stay on Eng-

strum. The fact tliat they have a
confession in their files isn’t going
to hurt me any. But it will clear
Cash. All they’ll have him on then
is the hijacking, and he’s already
served enough time to cover that.”
The girl turned and looked ques-
tioningly at Windy and Bull. The
old man shook his head.

“It’s too easy,” he said. “He’s got
something up his sleeve.”

“Not this time,” said the gam-
bler quickly. “And don’t worry
about that reward money. I’ll see
that you’re taken care of.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” The
old man put one thin hand on the
girl’s shoulder. “Look, honey,” he
said earnestly. “If I could help I
would, but we’d just be cutting our
own throats. Big Head has a repu-
tation for always settling up a score.
Even if he couldn’t get off Eng-
strum to handle it himself, he’s got
hired guns who could.”

She turned to Bull, her jade-
green eyes looking up into his
pleadingly. He felt himself being
caught by a familiar emotion and
fought against it. Every time he let
himself get tangled up with either
dice or women he ended up in
trouble.

“I’m sorry, Red,” he said uncom-
fortably, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to
go along with Windy.”

She let out a strangled half-sob
and started out of the engine room.
At the door she paused, reached
down as if to straighten her skirt>
and then suddenly spun around, ^

74

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

wicked looking little needle gun
that had been concealed in a tiny
holster strapped to her thigh leveled
at them.

“Reach!” she snapped. ‘Tm not
joking — get your hands up.”

Bull took a tentative step toward
her. “All right, so you aren’t. But
hand over that thing before it acci-
dentally goes off and hurts some-
body." He advanced another step,
hand outstretched. "Come on,
honey.”

Her eyes narrowed and then
without warning she fired. There
was a soft splat and a needle beam
scorched the air three inches above
his head and burned a neat little
hole in the bulkhead behind him.

Bull’s hand and jaw dropped
simultaneously.

“That was a deliberate miss,” she
said coldly. “Now get those hands
up and face the wall.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Bull and he
and Windy turned obediently. He
felt his heavy blaster jerked from
its holster and then the girl said,
“O.K., you can drop them now.”
‘What’s going on around here?”
demanded Windy, indignantly.
“We’re partners, remember? You
don’t have to come in here waving
hardware at us. If you want some-
thing, all you have to do is ask.”
“Sorry," she said. She seemed to
be. “But what I’m after is going to
cost you ten thousand credits. This
way saves argument."

She waved the gun toward Big
Head. “Untie him!”

‘What for?” demanded Windy.

"Because I said so.” She waved
the gun again. “Get hopping.” A
moment later the gambler stood
massaging his wrists. She gestured
toward the door. “Get up to the
control room.” Big Head eyed her
gun uneasily and obeyed.

Her voice softened somewhat as
she turned to the two bewildered
spacemen.

“I’m going to have to lock you in.
I’ve got enough to worry about
without you two wandering around
the ship getting into mischief.”

The hatch swung shut behind
her with a clang and then there was
a clanking sound as she dogged it
down from outside. Bull thought
regretfully of his useless blaster. If
it were loaded he could have cut
through the thick plate like butter.

"What now?” said Windy.

Bull thought for a moment and
then went over and set the emer-
gency dogs on the engine room side
of the door.

'We can’t get out, they can't get
in." He went over to the control
panel and threw the massive
switches on the lines that piped
-power to the drive tubes and the
Bensons. "What’s more, unless they
want to get out and push, they are-
n’t about to take this old clunker
anyplace. Give them a call on die
intercom and break the news as
gently as you can.”

Stalemate.

The controls were forward and

75

Aces Loaded

the power was aft — and neither
was any good without the other.
The Pelican orbited aimlessly as
one hour went by and then an-
other. Three times Big Head ofiEered
a deal and three times Bull and
Windy turned him down after care-
ful thinkin g had imcovered the hid-
den joker. Now it was their turn.
Bull turned on the intercom.

“Still there, Big Head? Windy
and I have a feeling we aren’t get-
ting any place.”

“Got something in mind?”

“Yeah. We’ll admit w'e’re whip-
ped, but we want to keep on
living. We'll take the deal you of-
fered in the first place but we have
to have some protection. Here’s
what we got in mind ...”

Big Head McCall, clumsy in
heavy space armor, looked with sat-
isfaction at the image of Engstrum
Four that completely filled the for-
ward vision plate. In its center a
large patch of winking li^ts
marked the spaceport. There was a
soft bum as the gambler made a
final test of the small anti-gray
units built into the back of the suit
and then awkwardly he signed the
detailed confession that would clear
Cash Shirey. His gauntleted left
hand held the gun the girl had
given him.

Bull gestured at the screen.
“We’re only twenty miles up. This
is as close in as I’m going. You can
ride your anti-gravs dowm and be
home in five minutes. And don’t

get any bright ideas about taking a
couple of snap shots at us on your
way out. You’ve got to have power
to operate the airlock and Windy’U
cut the switches at the first sign
anything is wrong.”

“I know,” said the gambler re-
gretfully. "Maybe next time.” He
picked up the confession and with
the gun stQl at ready, he backed
into the emergency escape lock.
Placing the thin sheet of paper in
the jamb of the inner port, he pulled
the heavy hatch shut. A corner of
the paper stuck through into the
control room.

"O.K., Bull,” said the girl, “Every-
thing’s clear.” The pilot pushed a
release button and with a pop of
escaping air, the gambler tumbled
free into outer space.

She rushed over, jerked open-the
inner door of the emergency lock,
and grabbed up the precious piece
of paper. There were tears in her
eyes when she turned to the pilot.

“I’m sorry for everything, Bull,”
she said miserably. “But I had to
clear my father. He wouldn’t have
lasted much longer where he was.”

Bull nodded soberly. “I suppose
I’d have done the same if I’d been
in your spot,” he said. “Anyway,
maybe things aren’t as bad as they
look. Let’s go dovra and bail out
Windy.”

Two miles away from the Pelican
a space-suited figure drifted slowly,
trying dazedly to figure out w'hy
the planet that a short time before

76

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

had been so dose that it filled the
whole forward screen of the PeU-
can was now a distant glimmering
disk, far beyond the reach of the
limited little propulsion unit that
was built into his suit. His attempts
to understand what had happened
weren’t helped by the happy voice
that sounded tinnily from die little
suit speaker.

“And so,” it continued, “like I
was saying before I got so rudely in-
terrupted, there I was behind the
hydroponic shed with three red-
headed identical triplets. The way
I worked it was . .

Back on the Pelican a grinning
Bull led a bewildered girl out of the
control room and shut the door gen-
tly behind them.

“Bull,” she protested, “I want to
know what happened!”

“You’re too young,” he said vir-
tuously.

She stamped one little foot im-
patiently. “You know very well what
I mean. What happened with Big
Head? Why’s he still drifting along-
side instead of floating down to-
ward Engstrum on his anti-gravs?
And how can the Patrol be coming
to pick him up — we can’t be more
than twenty miles out of atmos-
phere?

"Well, honey, it’s this way,” said
Bull in a passable imitation of
Windy’s cracked voice. “Instead of
coming, we went. We’re twenty
thousand miles out and getting far-
ther away every minute.”

He led her down into the en-

gine room, went over to the far
wall where the scanner gear was
mounted, and pointed to the two
shielded leads that were plugged in
at one end.

“Lead from the forward scan-
ner,” he said, tapping one, “and
lead from the aft. Switch them
around and a picture of what’s be-
hind comes in on the forward plate.
What Big Head saw was a picture
of what we were moving away
from.”

“But it kept getting bigger!”

"Sure it did.” He pointed to an
awkwardly constructed piece of
equipment fliat was bolted to the
side of the cabinet. "This is Windy’s
idea of a replacement for the am-
plification control on the forward
screen. He just sat down here be-
hind locked doors and kept jacking
up the magnification.” He grinned
down at her. “It was just like he
said, there’s nothing wrong with the
Pelican that a little tinkering can’t
fix up.”

He stretched out comfortably
and settled do^vn in the engineer’s
chair.

He wasn’t too surprised when
she slid into his lap.

“It’s too bad,” he said as he put
an arm around her.

"What is?”

“That you aren’t triplets. I won-
der if it’s reaUy possible.”

She made a little cat sound and
snuggled closer.

“Couldn't we just pretend?” she
said.

ON HAND: A Book

by THEODORE STURGEON

Sturgeon has always, wanted to review books, primarily because Sturgeon
has always wanted to review books; beyond that he will not excuse himself.
He will, however, explain his method.

He will read, and report on, everything sent him for review. He will
sit around searching his soul imtil his poor squeezed deadline screams,
and then choose one volume for a detailed review, consigning all others to
be buffed or buffeted on a thumbnail. This wiU hurt everybody, which is
fine, pain being the natural wake of criticism and creator of ibe cavitations
of controversy, without which one has no valid test of one’s convictions.

He will affect this third-person tactic, for it is his seasoned observation
that the only sound riposte to critical injustice is “That’s only his opinion.’*
For a reviewer to say, in every review, “In my opinion . . would be
initially obtrusive and ultimately meaningless. For him never to say it
(and this is the practice of almost all critics) is to be The Oracle: ‘This
is a bad book. This is a good book. This is not as good as his last book."
There are two dangers in reviewing books from the altitude of the absolute.
The lesser is diat a reader — any reader — might conclude that he now
knows The Truth about a certain book. The larger peril is that in time
the reviewer might fall into the same error, as indeed most of them have.

So your Venture reviewer is no disembodied voice with a short line to
sagacity, nor an intrusive “I,” but “he,” always “he,” lest you (and he) for-
get that what he says is only what he says. I know him well, and have
my owm opinions on the worth of his. But I would not for the w'orld
attempt to graft my evaluation of his comments on yours. I just want you
to know what he thinks.

And there he goes straight up the wall, uplifted and enthusiastic, bel-
lowing to all Convention Committees to polish up an award — possibly a
brand new kind of award, say “For the Book Best Filling the Longest-Felt
Need in Science Fiction.”

It’s COMING ATTRACTIONS (Ed. Martin Greenberg, Gnome Press,
254 pp, Illustrated, $3.50) and lie's never seen anything like it, and nei-
ther have you. It has made him sit back (up there on die picture mold-
77

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

78

ing) and ponder a moment on what he reads s f for anyway. Science?
Fiction? No; they can be had elsewhere, more and often better. Well
then, what about this quality “entertainment” which the proprietors of s f
use to defend themselves when raided, like a landlady asserting she runs
a decent place here? It isn’t that either; lots of things are as entertaining
as s f. Tell you what it is, he ruminates soberly as he comes down off
tlie wall, knocking over the yogliurt: he reads s f because of its expansion
of the known — its thrusting back of horizons. S f has no inhibitions when
it penetrates or extrapolates or makes extensions. S f is bold and unabashed
and not embarrassed by its speculations. This is the quality which, when
added to good fiction, makes good s f; but this wonderfiil reach of the
field is its heart. Conversely, subtract the fiction from the best s f tliink-
ing, and you hold this heart in your hand; and that, he shouts delight-
edly is what Marty Greenberg has done to make coming attractions.

It isn’t fiction. It’s Willy Ley on “Geography for Time Travelers” and
the nature of “Space War” and on the problems of writing “A Letter to the
Martians” that Martians could be expected to understand, together with
some ways and means of devising a calendar for Mars. It’s deCamp on
“Language for Time Travelers” and Kornbluth on “Time Travel and the
Law” — both amusingly written and splendidly researched. There’s R. S.
Richardson on "Space Fix” — an attack not only on the problem of pin-
pointing a ship’s position bet^veen worlds, but on the idea that it’s as
tough a problem as it looks. There’s Malcolm Jameson on “Space War
Tactics,” a discussion on “Fuel for the Future” — the machine to be fueled
happens to be human — by the articulate Jack Hatcher; a fine bit of
tongue-in-cheek on the sad state of the copyright laws in the days of
interstellar intercourse, by Donald F. Reines; and then there’s your re-
viewer’s personal favorite, as must needs be for one who has reduced
the cosmos to Sturgeon’s Law: Nothing Is Always Absolutely So from
a lifelong search for something you can really count on — it’s Frederik
Pohl’s “How to Count on Your Fingers.”

'These people (proclaims your reporter) know what they’re talking
about, reason like computers, and without exception write vividly, amus-
ingly, understandably. They take you from the prehistoric to the far
future, through applications of chemistry, astronomy, astronautics, in-
formation theory, law, semantics, mathematics, geology, ballistics, logis-
tics, strategy, history, literature and -plenty more, along with a good deal
of human stupidity to balance it all out. They are researchers, educators,
writers (in spots, writer’s writers), and comedians when called upon.

Buy this book (he intones) and use it to knock out the front teeth
of the next nudnick who equates s f with Buck Rogers and Captain

On Hand: A Book

79

Video. Buy it if you don’t know Bow far, how hi^, and how fast
the mind — and that’s your mind» bub — can travel. Buy it if you’ve
always read s f, or if you’ve never read s f. Buy it if you Aink this field
can’t explosively criticize its own vast sloppiness. You can’t pretend to
be a s f author without it as a hand/hornbook. And if, like your ec-
static reviewer, you want great greedy chunks of the very materid you’ve
been rooting up, morsel by tidbit, for all your years as a s f reader,
then this is for you.

He closes his rhapsody with a compliment to Dwight Wayne Batteau
for a sprightly and sharp-edged introduction, and goes off to find that
Convention Committee so he can promulgate that award. It would make
sense, he says, because the following year it could conceivably be won
(by Marty Greenberg again, if he has the wit to build it) with a col-
lection of the most thought-provoking editorials from s f magazines.

Well, Marty?

And so, CaviOT Emptat, which means:

The Sturgeon is all gon€*.

BOOK

TYPE & TIME

BUY IT—

REMARKS

The Deep Range
A. C. Clarke
Harcoun-Brace
238 pp $3.95

Novel

21st-22nd

Century

— to see marine bi-
ology meld with
astronautics, sociol-
ogy & religion

Fiction not up to science but
science worth the price.

The Winds of Time
Chad Oliver
Doubleday
192 pp $3.95

Novel
15,000 BC-
2450 AD; EX In-
terplanetary

— if you can afford
1 or 2 enjoyable
evenings at this
price.

Swift, intriguing, unweighty.
Not really great but really
good.

Strangers in the Uni-
verse

Clifford Simak
Simon & Schuster
371 pp $3.50

Collection:
11 stories

—by all means!

Simak is the most imderrated
great s f writer alive.

Best SF Stories &
Novels ’56
Ed. T. E. Dikiy
Frederick Fell
256 pp $3.50

Anthology; 13
titles plus SF
Year and Kemp’s
Book Index

—of course. Then
give it to an intel-
ligent non-reader of
s £

Far and away Dikty’s best yet
Fine Miller, Clifton, Budrys
and others.

Cycle of Fire
Hal Qemeat
Ballanline
185 pp 35«

ET adventure,
future.

— ^if you like crystal-
line logic, strange
settings.

Astonishing exercise in real
science really applied to s f
coupled with dialogue unseen
since Peewee Harris on the
Trail.

Evil men had stolen his treasure, and Raud set out with
his deer rifle and his great dog Brave to catch the thieves
before they could reach the Starfolk. That the men had
negatron pistols meant little^Raud was the Keeper , . .

THE KEEPER

When he heaed the deer
crashing through brush and scuf-
fling the dead leaves, he stopped
and stood motionless in the path.
He watched them bolt down the
slope from the right and cross in

by H. BEAM PIPER

front of him, wishing he had the
rifle, and when the last white tail
vanished in the gray-brown woods
he drove the spilce of the ice-staff
into the stiffening ground and took

81

The Keeper

both hands to shift the weight of
the pack. If he'd had the rifle, he
could have shot only one of them.
As it was, they were unfrightened,
and he knew where to find them
in the morning.

Ahead, to the west and north,
low clouds massed; the white front
of the Ice-Father loomed clear and
sharp between them and the blue
of the distant forests. It would
snow, tonight. If it stopped at day-
break, he would have good track-
ing, and in any case, it would be
easier to get the carcasses home
over snow. He wrenched loose the
ice-staff and started forward again,
following the path that wound be-
tween and among and over the ir-
regular mounds and hillocks. It was
still an hour’s walk to Keeper's
House, and the daylight was fading
rapidly.

Sometimes, when he was not so
weary and in so much haste, he
would loiter here, wondering about
the ancient buildings and the long-
vanished people who had raised
them. There had been no woods at
all, then; nothing but great houses
like mountains, piling up toward
the sk)’, and the valley where he
meant to hunt tomorrow had been
an arm of the sea that was now a
three days’ foot-journey away. Some
said that the cities had been de-
stroyed and the people killed in
wars — big wars, not squabbles like
the fights between sealing-com-
panies from different villages. He
didn’t think so, himself. It was

more likely that they had all left
their homes and gone away in star-
ships when the Ice-Father had been
born and started pushing down out
of the north. There had been many
starships, then. When he bad been
a boy, the old men had talked about
a long-ago time when there bad
been hundreds of them visible in
the sky, every morning and eve-
ning. But that had been long ago
indeed. Starships came but seldom
to this world, now. This world was
old and lonely and poor. Like poor
lonely old Raud the Keeper.

He felt angry to find himself
thinking like that. Never pity your-
self, Kaud; be proud. That was
what his father had always taught
him: “Be proud, for j'ou are the
Keeper’s son, and when I am gone,
you will be the Keeper after me.
But in your pride, be humble, for
what you will keep is the Crown.”

The thought of the Crown, never
entirely absent from his mind, wak-
ened the anxiety that always slept
lightly if at ail. He had been away
aU day, and there were so many
things that could happen. The
path seemed longer, after that; the
landmarks farther apart. Finally,
he came out on the edge of the
steep bank, and looked down across
the brook to the familiar low win-
dowless walls and sharp-ridged roof
of Keeper’s House; and when he
came, at last, to the door, and
pulled the latchstring, he heard the
dogs inside — the soft, coughing
bark of Brave, and the anxious lit-

82

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

tie whimper of Bold — and he knew
that there was nothing wrong in
Keeper’s House.

The room inside was lighted by
a fist-sized chunk of lumicon, hung
in a net bag of thongs from the
rafter over the table. It was old —
cast off by some rich Southron as
past its best brilliance, it had been
old when he had bought it from
Yom Nazvik the Trader, and that
had been years ago. Now its light
was as dim and yellow as firelight.
He’d have to replace it soon, but
this trip he had needed new car-
tridges for the big rifle. A man
could live in darkness more easily
than he could live without . car-
tridges.

The big black dogs were rising
from their bed of deerskins on the
stone slab that covered the crypt in
the far comer. They did not come
to meet him, but stayed in their
place of trust, greeting him with
anxious, eager little sounds.

“Good boys,” he said. “Good dog,
Brave; good dog, Bold. Old Keep-
er’s home again. Hungry?”

They recognized that word, and
whined. He hung up the ice-staff
on the pegs by the door, then
squatted and got his arms out of
the pack-straps.

“Just a little now; wait a little,”
he told the dogs. “Keeper’ll get
something for you.”

He unhooked the net bag that
held the lumicon and went to the
ladder, climbing to the loft be-
tween the stone ceiling and die

steep snow-shed roof; he cut down
two big chunks of smoked wild-ox
beef — the dogs liked that bet-
ter than smoked venison — and
climbed down.

He tossed one chunk up against
the ceiling, at the same time shout-
ing: “Bold! Catch!” Bold leaped
forward, sinking his teeth into the
meat as it was still falling, shaking
and mauling it. Brave, still on the
crypt-slab, was quivering widi hun-
ger and eagerness, but he remained
in place until the second chunk
was tossed and he was ordered to
take it. Then he, too, leaped and
caught it, savaging it in mimicry of
a kill. For a while, he stood watch-
ing them growl and snarl and tear
their meat, great beasts whose
shoulders came above his own
waist. Wliile they lived to guard it,
the Crown was safe. Then he
crossed to the hearth, scraped away
the covering ashes, piled on kin-
dling and logs and fanned the fire
alight. He lifted the pack to the
table and unlaced the deerskin
cover.

Cartridges in plastic boxes of
twenty, long and tliick; shot for the
duck-gun, and powder and lead
and cartridge-primers; fills for the
fire-lighter; sdt; needles; a new
file. And the deerskin bag of trade-
tokens. He emptied them on the
table and counted them — tokens,
and half-tokens and five-tokens,
and even one ten-token. There
were always less in the bag, after
each trip to the ^'illage. The South-

83

The Keeper

rons paid less and less, each year,
for furs and skins, and asked more
and more for what they had to sell.

He put away the things he had
brought from the village, and was
considering whether to open the
crypt now and replace the bag of
tokens, when tlie dogs stiffened,
looking at the door. They got to
their feet, neck-hairs bristling, as
the knocking began.

He tossed the token-bag onto the
mantel and went to the door, the
dogs following and standing ready
as he opened it.

The snow had started, and now
the ground was white except under
the evergreens. Three men stood
outside the door, and over their
shoulders he could see an airboat
grounded in the clearing in front
of the house.

"You are honored, Raud Keep-
er,” one of them began. “Here are
strangers w'ho have come to talk to
5'ou. Strangers from the Stars!”

He recognized the speaker, in
sealskin boots and deerskin trousers
and hooded overshirt like his own
— Vahr Farg’s son, one of the vil-
lage people. His father was dead,
and his woman was the daughter of
Gorth Sledmaker, and he was a
house-dweller witli his woman's
father. A worthless youth, lazy and
stupid and said to be a coward.
Still, guests were guests, even when
brought by the likes of Vahr Farg’s
son. He looked again at the airboat,
and remembered seeing it, that
day, made fast to the top-deck of

Yorn Narvik’s trading-ship, the
hsa.

“Enter and be welcome; the
house is yours, and all in it that is
mine to give.” He turned to the
dogs. “Brave, Bold; go watch.”

Obediently, they trotted over to
the crypt and lay down. He stood
aside; Vahr entered, standing aside
also, as though he were the host,
inviting his companions in. They
wore heavy garments of woven
cloth and boots of tanned leatlier
with hard heels and stiff soles, and
as they came in, each unbuckled
and laid aside a belt with a bol-
stered negatron pistol. One was
stocky and broad-shouldered, with
red hair; the other was slender,
dark haired and dark eyed, with
a face as smooth as a woman's.
Everybody in the village had won-
dered about them. They were not
of Yom Narvik’s crew, but passen-
gers on the Issa.

“These are Empire people, from
the Far Stars,” Vahr informed him,
naming their names. Long names,
which meant nothing; certainly
they were not names the Southrons
from the Warm Seas bore. “And
this is Raud tlie Keeper, witli
whom your honors wish to speak.”

“Keeper’s House is honored. Fm
sorry that I have not food prepared;
if you can excuse me while I make
some ready . .

‘Tou think tiiese noblemen from
llie Stars would eat your swill?”
Vahr hooted. "Crazy old fool, these
are — ”

84

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

The slim man pivoted on his
heel; his open hand caught Vahr
Just below the ear and knocked him
sprawling. It must have been some
land of trick-blow. That or else the
slim stranger was stronger than he
looked.

“Hold your miserable tonguel”
he told Vahr, who was getting to
his feet. “We’re guests of Raud the
Keeper, and we’ll not have him in-
sulted in his own house by a cur
like you!”

The man with red hair turned.
“1 am ashamed. We should not
have brought this into your house;
we should have left it outside.” He
spoke the Northland language well.
“It will honor us to share your food.
Keeper.”

“Yes, and see here,” the younger
man said, "we didn’t know you’d
be alone. Let us help you. Dra-
nigo’s a hne cook, and I’m not bad,
myself.”

He started to protest, then let
them have their way. After all, a
guest’s women helped the woman
of the house, and as there was no
woman in Keeper’s House, it was
not unfitting for them to help him.

“Your friend’s name is Dra-
nigo?” he asked. “I’m sorry, but I
didn’t catch yours.”

“1 don’t wonder; fool mouthed
it so badly I couldn’t understand it
myself. It’s Salvadro.”

They fell to work with him, lay-
ing out eating-tools — there were
Just enough to go around — and
hunting for dishes, of which there

were not. Salvadro saved that situa-
tion by going out and bringing
some in from the airboat. He must
have realized that the lumicon over
the table was the only light beside
the fire in the house, for he was
carrying a globe of the luminous
plastic with him when he came in,
grumbling about how dark it had
gotten outside. It was new and
brilliant, and the li^t hurt Baud's
eyes, at first.

"Are you truly from ihe Stars?”
he asked, after the food was on the
table and they had begun to eat.
“Neither I nor any in the viUage
have seen anybody from the Stars
before.”

The big man with the red hair
nodded. 'Tfes. We are from
Dremna.”

Why, Dremna was the Great
World, at the middle of eveiythingl
Dremna was the Empire. People
from Dremna came to the cities of
Awster and fabulous Antark as
Southron traders from the Warm
Seas came to the villages of the
Northfolk. He stammered some-
thing about that.

“Yes. You see, we . . .” Dra-
nigo began. “I don’t know the word
for it, in your language, but we’re
people whose work it is to learn
things. Not from other people or
from books, -but new things, that
nobody else knows. We came here
to learn about the long-ago times
on this world, like the great city
that was here and is now mounds
of stone and earth. Then, when we

The Keeper

go back to Dremna, we will tell
other people what we have found
out."

Vahr Farg's son, having eaten
his fill, w'as fidgeting on his stool,
looking contemptuously at the
strangers and their host. He thought
they were fools to waste time learn-
ing about people who had died long
ago. So he thought the Keeper was
a fool, to guard a worthless old
piece of junk.

Raud hesitated for a moment,
then said: "I have a very ancient
thing, here in this house. It was
worn, long ago, by great kings.
Their names, and the name of their
people, are lost, but the Crown re-
mains. It was left m me as a trust
by my father, who was Keeper be-
fore me and to whom it was left by
his father, who was Keeper in his
time. Have you heard of it?”

Dranigo nodded. “We heard of
it, first of all, on Dremna,” he said.
"The Empire has a Space Navy
base, and obsen'atories and relay
stations, on this planet. Space
Navy officers who had been here
brought the story back; they heard
it from traders from the Warm
Seas, who must have gotten it from
people like Yom Narvik. Would
you show it to us. Keeper? It was
to see the Crown that we came
here.”

Raud got to his feet, and saw, as
he unhooked the lumicon, that he
was trembling. 'Tes, of course. It is
an honor. It is an ancient and won-
derful thing, but I never thought

85

that it was known on Dremna.*^ He
hastened across to the crypt.

The dogs looked up as he ap-
proached. They knew that he
wanted to lift the cover, but they
were comfortable and had to be
coaxed to leave it. He laid aside the
deerskins. The stone slab was
heavy, and he had to strain to tilt
it up. He leaned it against the wall,
then picked up the lumicon and
went down the steps into the little
room below, opening the wooden
chest and getting out the bundle
wrapped in bearskin. He brought it
up again and carried it to the ta-
ble, from which Dranigo and Sal-
vadro were clearing the dishes.

“Here it is,” he said, untying the
diongs. “I do not know how old it
is. It was old even before the Ice-
Father was bom.”

That was too much for Vahr.
“See, I told you he’s crazy!” he
cried. “The Ice-Father has been
here forever. Gorth Sledmaker says
so,” he added, as though that set-
tled it.

“Gorth Sledmaker's a fool. He
thinks the world began in the time
of his grandfather." He had the
thongs untied, and spread the bear-
skin, revealing the blackened leath-
er box, flat on the bottom and
domed at the top. “How long ago
do you think it was that the Ice-
Father was bora?” he asked Sal-
vadro and Dranigo.

"Not more than two thousand
years,” Dranigo said. “The glacia-
tion hadn’t started in the time of

86

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

the Third Empire. There is no rec-
ord of this planet during the
Fourth, but by the beginning of
the Fifth Empire, less than a thou-
sand years ago, things here were
very much as they are now.”

"There are other worlds which
have Ice-Fathers,” Salvadro ex-
plained. “They are all worlds hav-
ing one pole or the other in open
water, surrounded by land. When
the polar sea is warmed by water
from the tropics, snow falls on die
lands around, and more falls in
winter than melts in summer, and
so is an Ice-Father formed. Then,
when the polar sea is all frozen, no
more snow falls, and the Ice-Father
melts faster than it grows, and fi-
nally vanishes. And then, when
warm water comes into the, polar
sea again, .more snow falls, and it
starts over again. On a world like
this, it takes fifteen or twenty thou-
sand years from one Ice-Father to
die next.”

"I never heard that there had
been another Ice-Fadier, before
this one. But then, I only know
the stories told by the old men,
when I was a boy. I suppose that
was before the first people came in
starships to this world.”

The two men of Dremna looked
at one another oddly, and he won-
dered, as he unfastened the brass
catches on the box, if he had said
something foolish, and then he had
the box open, and lifted out the
Crowm. He was glad, now, that
Salvadro had brought in the new

lumicon, as he put the box aside
and set the Crown on the black
bearskin. The golden circlet- and
the four arches of gold above it
were clean and bright, and the
jewels were splendid in the light.
Salvadro and Dranigo were looking
at it wide-eyed. Vahr Farg’s son
was open-mouthed.

“Great Universe! Will you look
at that diamond on the top!” Sal-
vadro was saying.

‘That's not the work of any Ga-
lactic art-period,” Dranigo declared.
"That thing goes back to the Pre-
Intersteiler Era.” And for a while he
talked excitedly to Salvadro.

"Tell me. Keeper,” Salvadro said
at length, "how much do you know
about the Cro^vn? Where did it
come from; who made it; who were
the first Keepers?”

He shook his head. "l only know
what my father told me, when I
was a boy. Now I am an old man,
and some things I have forgotten.
But my father was Runch, Baud's
son, who was the son of Yorn, the
son of Raud, the son of Runch.”
He went back six more generations,
then faltered and stopped. "Beyond
that, the names have been lost. But
I do know diat for a long time the
Crown was in a city to the north of
here, and before that it was brought
across the sea from another coun-
try, and the name of that country
was Brinn.”

Dranigo frowned, as though he
had never heard the name before.

“Brinn.” Salvadro's eyes wid-

The Keeper

ened. "Brinn, Dranigo! Do you
think that might be Britain?”

Dranigo straightened, staring.
“It might be! Britain was a great
nation, once; the last nation to
join the Terran Federation, in the
Third Century Pre-Interstellar. And
they had a king, and a crown with
a great diamond. . .

“The story of where it was
made,” Baud offered, “or who made
it, has been lost. I suppose the first
people brought it to this world when
they came in starships.”

“It’s more wonderful than that,
Keeper,” Salvadro said. “It was
made on this world, before the first
starship was built. This world is
Terra, the Motlier-World; didn’t
you know that, Keeper? This is the
world where Man was born.”

He hadn’t known that. Of
course, there had to be a world like
that, but a great world in the mid-
dle of everything, like Dremna.
Not this old, forgotten world.

“It’s true, Keeper,” Dranigo told
him. He hesitated slightly, then
cleared his throat. “Keeper, you’re
young no longer, and some day you
must die, as your father and his
father did. Who will care for the
Crovm then?”

Who, indeed? His woman had
died long ago, and she had given
him no sons, and the daughters she
had given him had gone their own
ways with men of tlieir own choos-
ing and he didn’t know what had
become of any of them. And the
village people — they would start

87

picking the Crown apart to sell the
jewels, one by one, before the ashes
of his pyre stopped smoking.

“Let us have it. Keeper,” Sal-
vadro said. “We will take it to
Dremna, where armed men will
guard it day and night, and it will
be a trust upon the Government of
the Empire forever.”

He recoiled in horror. “Man!
You don’t know what you’re say-
ing!” he cried. ‘This is Ae Crown,
and I am the Keeper; I cannot part
with it as long as there is life in
me.”

"And when there is not, what?
Will it be laid on your pyre, so
that it may end with you?” Dranigo
asked.

"Do you think we’d throw it
away as soon as we got tired look-
ing at it?” Salvadro exclaimed. “To
show you how we’ll value this, well
give you . . . how much is a
thousand imperials in trade-tokens,
Dranigo?”

“I’d guess about twenty thou-
sand.”

‘We’ll give you twenty thousand
Government trade-tokens,” Saiva-
dro said. “If it costs us that much,
you'U believe that we’ll take care of
it, won’t you?”

Raud rose stiffly. “It is a wrong
thing,” he said, “to enter a man’s
house and eat at his table, and then
insult him.”

Dranigo rose also, and Salvadro
with him. ‘We had no mind to in-
sult you, Keeper, or offer you a
bribe to betray your trust. We only

88

VENTTJRE SCIENCE FICTION

ofEer to help you fuIBU it, so that
the Crown will be safe after all of
us are dead. Well, we won’t talk
any more about it, now. We're go-
ing in Yorn Nazvik’s ship, tomor-
row; he’s trading in the country to
the west, but before he returns to
the Warm Seas, hell stop at Long
Valley Town, and well fly over to
see you. In the meantime, think
about this; ask yourself if you
would not be doing a better thing
for the Crown by selling it to us.”

They wanted to leave the dishes
and the new lumicon, and he per-
mitted it, to show that he was not
offended by their offer to buy the
Crown. He knew that it was some-
thing very important to them, and
he admitted, grudgingly, that they
could care for it better than he. At
least, they would not keep it in -a
hole under a hut in the wilderness,
guarded only by dogs. But they
were not Keepers, and he was. To
them, the Cro^vn would be but one
of many important things; to him
it was everything. He could not
imagine life without it.

He lay for a long time among
his bed-robes, imable to sleep,
thinking of die Crown and the
visitors. Finally, to escape those
dioughts, he began planning to-
morrow morning’s hunt.

He would start out as soon as the
snow stopped, and go down among
the scrub-pines; he would take
Brave with him, and leave Bold on
guard at home. Brave was more
obedient, and a better hunter. Bold

would jump for the deer that bad
been shot, but Brave always tried
to catch or turn the ones that were
still running.

He needed meat badly, and he
needed more deerskins, to make
new clothes. He was thinking of
the new overshirt he meant to
make as he fell asleep. . . .

It was past noon when he and
Brave turned back toward Keeper’s
House. The deer had gone farther
than he had expected, but he had
foimd them, and killed four. The
carcasses were cleaned and hung
from trees, out of readi of the foxes
and the wolves, and he would take
Brave back to the house and leave
him on guard, and return with
Bold and the sled to bring in the
meat. He was thinking cheerfully
of the fresh meat when he came out
onto the path from the village, a
mile from Keeper’s House. Then he
stopped short, looking at the tracks.

TTuree men — no, four — had
come from the direction of the til-
lage since the snow had stopped.
One had been wearing sealskin
boots, of the sort worn by all
Northfolk. The others had worn
Southron boots, with ribbed plastic
soles. That puzzled him. None of
the village people wore Southron
boots, and as he had been leaving
in the early morning, he had seen
Yom Nazvik’s ship, the Issa, lift
out from the village and pass over-
head, vanishing in the west. Pos-
sibly these were deserters, fn any
case, they were not good people.

The Keeper

He slipped the heavy rifle from its
snow-cover, checked the chamber,
and hung the empty cover around
his neck like a scarf. He didn’t like
the looks of it.

He liked it even less when he
saw that the man in sealskin boots
had stopped to examine the tracks
he and Brave had made on leaving,
and had then circled the house and
come back, to be joined by his plas-
tic-soled companions. Then they
had aU put down their packs and
their ice-staffs, and advanced to-
ward the door of the house. They
had stopped there for a moment,
and then they had entered, come
out again, gotten their packs and
ice-staffs, and gone away, up the
slope to the north.

“Wait, Brave,” he said. “Watch.”

Then he advanced, careful not
to step on any of the tracks until he
reached the doorstep, where it
could not be avoided.

"Boldl” he called loudly. “Bold!”

Silence. No welcoming whim-
per, no padding of feet, inside. He
pulled the latchstring with his left
hand and pushed the door open
with his foot, die rifle ready. There
was no need for that. What wel-
comed him, within, was a sicken-
ing stench of burned flesh and hair.

The new lumicon lighted the
room brilliandy; his first glance
was enough. The slab that had cov-
ered the crypt was thrown aside,
along with the pile of deerskins,
and between it and the door was a
shapeless black heap that, in a dim-

89

mer light, would not have been in-
stantly recognizable as the body of
Bold. Fighting down an impulse to
rush in, he stood in the door, look-
ing about and reading the story of
what had happened. The four men
had entered, knowing tliat they
would find Bold alone. The one in
the lead had had a negatron pistol
drawn, and when Bold had leaped
at them, he had been blasted. The
blast had caught the dog from in
front — the chest-cavity was liter-
ally exploded, and the neck and
head burned and smashed unrecog-
nizably. Even the brass studs on
the leather collar had been melted.

That and the ribbed sole-prints
outside meant the same thing —
Southrons. Every Southron who
came into the Northland, even the
common crewmen on the trading
ships, carried some kind of an en-
ergy-weapon. They were good only
for fighting — one look at the body
of Bold showed what they did to
meat and skins.

He entered, then, laying his rifle
on the table, and got down the
lumicon and went over to the
crypt. After a while, he returned,
himg up the light again, and
dropped onto a stool. He sat staring
at the violated crypt and tugging
with one hand at a comer of his
beard, trying desperately to think.

The thieves had known exactly
where the Crown was kept and
how it was guarded; after killing
Bold, they had gone straight to it,
taken it and gone away — three men

90

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

in plastic-soled Soudiron boots and
! one man in soft boots of sealskins,

I each with a pack and an ice-staff,
and two of them ^vith rifles.

' Vahr Farg’s son, and three de-
serters from the crew of Yom Naz-
vik's ship.

It hadn't been Branigo and Sal-
! vadro. They could have left the
ship in their airboat and come
back, flying low, while he had been
hunting. But they would have
^tmded near the house, they
would not have carried packs, and
they would have brought nobody
widi them.

He thought he knew what had
happened. Vahr Farg's son had
seen the Crown, and he had heard
die two Starfolk offer more trade-
tokens for it than everything in the
village was worth. But he was a
coward; he would never dare to
face the Keeper’s rifle and the teeth
of Brave and Bold alone. So, since
none of the village folk would have
part in so shamed a crime against
the moral code of the Northland,
he had talked three of Yorn Naz-
vik’s airmen into deserting and
joining him.

And he had heard Dranigo say
that the Issa would return to Long
Valley Town after the trading voy-
age to the west. Long Valley was
on the other side of this tongue of
the Ice-Father; it was a good fif-
teen days’ foot-joumey aroimd, but
by climbing and crossing, they
could easily be there in time to
meet Yom Narvik’s ship and the

two Starfolk. Well, where Vahr
Farg’s son could take three South-
rons, Baud the Keeper could fol-
low.

Their tracks led up the slope be-
side the brook, always bearing to
the left, in the direction of the Ice-
Father. After an hour, he found
where they had stopped and un-
slung their packs, and rested long
enough to smoke a cigarette. He
read the story they had left in the
snow, and then continued. Brave
trotting behind him pulling the
sled. A few snowflakes began danc-
ing in die air, and he quickened his
steps. He knew, generally, where
the thieves were going, but he
wanted their tracks unobliterated
in front of him. The snow fell
thicker and thicker, and it was
growing dark, and he was tiring.
Even Brave was stumbling occa-
sionally before Baud stopp^, in a
hollow among the pines, to build
his dny fire and eat and feed the
dog. TTiey bedded down together,
covered by the same sleeping robes.

When he woke, the world was
still black and white and gray in
the early dawn-light, and the robe
that covered him and Brave was
powdered with snow, and the pine-
branches above him were loaded
and sagging.

The snow had completely oblit-
erated the tracks of the four
thieves, and it was still falling.
When the sled was packed and the
dog harnessed to it, they set out.

91

The Keeper

keeping close to the flank of the
Ice-Father on their left.

It stopped snowing toward mid-
day, and a little after, he heard a
shot, far ahead, and then two more,
one upon the other. The first shot
would be the rifle of Vahr Farg's
son; it was a single-loader, like his
own. The other two were from one
of the light Southron rifles, which
fired a dozen shots one after an-
other. They had shot, or shot at,
something like a deer, he supposed.
That was sensible; it would save
their dried meat for the trip across
the back of the Ice-Father. And it
showed that they still didn’t know
he was following them. He found
their tracks, some hours later.

Toward dusk, he came to a steep
building-mound. It had fared bet-
ter than most of die houses of the
ancient people; it rose to twenty
times a man's height and on the
south-east side it was almost per-
pendicular. The other side sloped,
and he was able to climb to the
top, and far away, ahead of him,
he saw a tiny spark appear and
grow. The fire could not be more
than tivo hours ahead.

He built no fire that evening,
but shared a slab of pemmican with
Brave, and they huddled together
under the bearskin robe. The dog
fell asleep at once. For a long time,
Baud sat awake, thinking.

At first, he considered resting for
a ivhile, and then pressing forward
and attacking them as they slept.
He had to kill all of them to regain

the Crown; that he had taken for
granted from the first. He knew
what would happen if the Govern-
ment Police came into this. They
would take one Southron’s word
against the word of ten Northfolk,
and the thieves would simply claim
the Crown as theirs and accuse him
of trying to steal it. And Dranigo
and Salvadro — they seemed like
good men, but they might see this
as the only way to get the Crown
for themselves. ... He would have
to settle the affair for himself, be-
fore the men reached Long Valley
town.

If he could do it here, it would
save him and Brave the toil and
danger of climbing the Ice-Father.
But could he? They had two rifles,
one an autoloader, and they had in
all likelihood three negatron pis-
tols. After the single shot of the big
rifle was fired, he had only a knife
and a hatchet and the spiked and
pickaxed ice-staff, and Brave. One
of the thieves would kill him be-
fore he and Brave killed all of
them, and then the Crown would
be lost. He dropped into sleep, still
thinking of what to do.

He climbed the mpund of the
ancient building again in the
morning, and looked long and care-
fully at the face of the Ice-Father,
It would take the thieves the whole
day to reach that place where the
two tongues of the glacier split
apart, the easiest spot to climb.
T^ey would not try to climb that
evening; Vahr, who knew the most

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

92

about it, would be the last to advise
such a risk. He was sure that by
going up at the nearest point he
could get to the top of the Ice-
Father before dark, and drag Brave
up after him. It would be a fearful
climb, and he would have most of
a day’s journey after that to reach
the head of the long ravine up
which the thieves would come, but
when they came up, he could be
there waiting for them. He knew
what the old rifle could do, to an
. inch, and there were places where
the thieves would be coming up
where he cOuld stay out of blaster-
range and pick them all off, even
with a single-loader.

He knew about negatron pistols,
too. They shot little bullets of en-
ergy; they were very fast, and did
not drop, like a real bullet, so
that iio judgment of range was
needed. But the energy died quick-
ly; die negations lived only long
enough to go five hundred paces
and no more. At eight hundred, he
could hit a man easily. He almost
felt himself pitying Vahr Farg’s son
and his companions.

^Vhen he reached the tumble of
rocks that had been dragged along
with and pushed out from the Ice-
Father, he stopped and made up a
pack — sleeping robes, ail his car-
tridges, as much pemmican as he
could carry, and the bag of trade-
tokens. If the chase took him to
Long Valley Town, he would need
j money. He also coiled about his
waist a long rawhide climbing-rope.

and left the sled-hamess on Brave,
simply detaching the traces.

At first, they walked easily on
the sloping ice. Then, as it grew
steeper, he fastened the rope to the
dog’s harness and advanced a little
at a time, dragging Brave up after
him. Soon he was forced to snub
the rope with his ice-staff and chop
steps with his hatchet. Toward
noon — at least he thought it was
noon — it began snowing again,
and the valley below was blotted
out in a swirl of white.

They came to a narrow ledge,
where they could rest, with a wall
of ice rising sheerly above them.
He would have to climb that alone,
and then pull Brave up with the
rope. He started working his way
up the perpendicular face, clinging
by the pick of his ice-staff, chop-
ping footholds with the hatchet;
the pack and the slung rifle on his
back pulled at him and threatened
to drag him down. At length, he
dragged himself over the edge and
drove the ice-staff in.

“Up, Brave!” he called, tugging
on the rope. "Good dog. Brave;
come up!”

Brave tried to jump and slipped
back. He tried again, and this time
Baud snubbed Ae rope and held
him. Below the dog pawed fran-
tically, until he found a paw-hold
on one of the chopped-out steps.
Baud hauled on the rope, and
made another snub.

It seemed like hours. It prob-
ably was; his arms were aching,

93

The Keeper

and he had lost all sense of time, or
of the cold, or the danger of the
narrow ledge; he forgot about the
Crown and the men who had stolen
it; he even forgot how he had come
here, or that he had ever been any-
where else. All that mattered was
to get Brave up on tlie ledge be-
side him.

Finally Brave came up and got
first his fore-paws and then his
body over the edge. He lay
still, panting proudly, while Raud
hugged him and told him, over and
over, tliat he was a good dog. They
rested for a long time, and Raud
got a slab of pemmican from the
pack and divided it with Brave.

It was while they rested in the
snow, munching, that he heard the
sound for the first time. It was faint
and far away, and it sounded like
thunder, or like an avalanche be-
ginning, and that puzzled him, for
this was not the time of year for
either. As he listened, he heard it
again, and this time he recognized
it — negatron pistols. It frightened
him ; he wondered if the thieves
had met a band of hunters. No; if
they were fighting Northfolk, there
would be the reports of firearms,
too. Or might they be fighting
among themselves? Remembering
the melted brass studs on Bold’s
collar, he became more frightened
at tlie thought of what a negatron-
blast could do to the Crown.

The noise stopped, tlien started
again, and he got to his feet, call-
ing to Brave. They were on a wide

ledge that slanted upward toward
the north. It would take him closer
to the top, and closer to where
Vahr and his companions would
come up. Together, they started up,
Raud probing cautiously ahead of
him with the ice-staff for hidden
crevasses. After a while, he came
to a wide gap in the ice beside him,
slanting toward the top, its upper
end lost in swirling snow. So he
and Brave began climbing, and
after a while he could no longer
hear the negatron pistols.

When it was almost too dark to
go farther, he suddenly found him-
self on level snow, and here he
made camp, digging a hole and
lining it with the sleeping robes.

The sky was clear when he
woke, and a pale yellow light was
glowing in the east. For a while he
lay huddled with the dog, stiff and
miserable, and then he forced him-
self to his feet. He ate, and fed
Brave, and then checked his rifle
and made his pack.

He was sure, now, that he had a
plan that would succeed. He could
reach the place where Vahr and
the Southrons would come up long
before they did, and be waiting for
them. In his imagination, he could
see them coming up in single file,
Vahr Farg’s son in the lead, and he
could imagine himself hidden be-
hind a mound of snow, the ice-
staff upright to brace his left hand
and the forestock of the rifle rest-
ing on his outthrust thumb and the
butt against his shoulder. Tlie first

94

VEJfTURE SCIENCE FICTION

bullet would be for Vahr. He could
shoot all of them, one after an-
other, that way . . .

He stopped, looking in cha-
grined incredulity at the tracks in
front of him — the tracks he knew
so well, of one man in sealskin
boots and three men with ribbed
plastic soles. Why, it couldn't be!
They should be no more than half
way up the long ravine, between
the two tongues of the Ice-Father,
ten miles to the north. But here
they were, on the back of the Ice-
Father and crossing to the west
ahead of him. They must have
climbed the sheer wail of ice, only
a few miles from where he had
dragged himself and Brave to the
top. Then he remembered the nega-
tron-blasts he had heard. While he
had been chopping footholds with
a hatchet, they had been smashing
tons of ice out of their way.

"Well, Brave,” he said mildly.
"Old Keeper w'asn’t so smart, after
all, was he? Come on, Brave.”

The thieves were making good
time. He read that from the tracks
— straight, evenly spaced, no weary
heel-dragging. Once or twice, he
saw where they had stopped for a
brief rest. He hoped to see their
fire in the evening.

He didn't. They wouldn't have
enough fuel to make a big one, or
keep it burning long. But in the
morning, as he was breaking camp,
he saw black smoke ahead.

A few times, he had been in air-
boats, and had looked doAvn on the

back of the Icc-Fatlier, and it had
looked flat. Really, it was not.
There were long ridges, sheer on
one side and sloping gently on the
other, where the ice had overridden
hills and low mountains, or had
cracked and one side had pushed
up over the other. And there were
deep gullies where the prevailing
winds had scooped away loose snow
year after year for centuries, and
drifts w'here it had piled, many of
them higher than the building-
mounds of the ancient cities. But
from a distance, as from above,
they all blended into a featureless
white monotony.

At last, leaving a tangle of cliffs
and ravines, be looked out across
a broad stretch of nearly level snow
and saw, for the first time, the men
he was following. Four tiny dots,
so far that they seemed motionless,
strung out in single file. Instantly,
he crouched behind a swell in the
surface and dragged Brave down
beside him. One of them, looking
back, might see him, as he saw
them. When they vanished behind
a snow-hill, he rose and hastened
forward, to take cover again. He
kept at this aU day; by alternately
resting and running, he found him-
self gaining on them, and toward
evening, he was within rifle-range.
The man in the lead was Vahr
Farg’s son; even at that distance
he recognized him easily. The oth-
ers were Southrons, of course; they
wore quilted garments of cloth, and
quilted hoods. Tlie man next to

The Keeper

Vahr, in blue, carried a liBe, as
Vahr did. The man in yellow had
only an ice-sta£E, and the man in
green, at the rear, had the Crown
on his pack, still in the bearskin
bundle.

He waited, at the end of the
day, until he saw the light of their
fire. Then he and Brave circled
widely around their camp, and
stopped behind a snow-ridge, on
the other side of an open and level
stretch a mile wide. He dug the
sleeping-hole on the crest of the
ridge, making it larger than usual,
and piled up a snow breastwork
in front of it, with an embrasure
through which be could look or
fire ^\ithout being seen.

Before daybreak, he uas awake
and had his pack made, and when
he saw the smoke of the thieves’
campfire, he was lying behind his
breastwork, the rifle resting on its
folded cover, muzzle toward the
smoke. He lay for a long time,
watching, before he saw the file of
tiny dots emerge into the open.

They came forward steadily, in
the same order as on the day before,
Vahr in the lead and the man with
die Crown in the rear. The thieves
suspected nothing; they grew larger
and larger as they approached, un-
til they were at the range for which
he had set his sights. He cuddled
the butt of the rifle against his
cheek. As the man who carried the
Crown w'alked under the blade of
the front sight, he squeezed the
trigger.

9S

The rifle belched pink flame and
roared and pounded his shoulder.
As the muzzle was still rising, he
flipped open the breech, and Arew
out the empty. He inserted a fresh
round.

There were only three of them,
now. The man with the bearskin
bundle was down and motionless.
Vahr Farg’s son had gotten his rifle
unslung and uncovered. The South-
ron with the other rifle was slower;
he was only getting off the cover
as Vahr, who must have seen the
flash, fired hastily. Too hastily; the
bullet kicked up snow twenty feet
to the left. The third man had
draivn his negation pistol and w'as
tr>ing to use it; thin hairlines of
brilliance were jetting out from his
hand, stopping far short of their
mark.

Baud closed his sights on the
man with the autoloading rifle; as
he did, the man with the negatron
pistol, realizing tlie limitations of
his weapon, was sweeping it back
and forA, aiming at the snow fifty
yards in front of him. Baud couldn’t
see the effect of his second shot —
bet%^'een him and his target, blucish
light blazed and twinkled, and
dense clouds of steam rose — but he
felt sure that he had missed. He
reloaded, and w^atched for move-
ments on the edge of the rising
steam.

It cleared, slowly; when it did,
there was nothing behind it. Even
the body of the dead man was
gone. He blinked, bewildered. He’d

96

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

picked that place carefully; there
had been no gully or ravine within
running distance. Then he grunted.
There hadn’t been — but there was
now. The negation pistol again.
The tliieves were hidden in a pit
they had blasted, and they had
dragged the body in with them.

He crawled back to reassure
Brave, who was guarding the pack,
and to shift the pack back for some
distance. Then he returned to his
embrasure in the snow-fort and re-
sumed his watch. For a long time,
nothing happened, and then a head
came briefly peeping up out of the
pit. A head under a green hood.
Raud chuckled mirthlessly into his
beard. If he’d been doing that, he’d
have traded hoods with the dead
man before shoving up his body to
draw fire. This kept up, at intervals,
for about an hour. He was wonder-
ing if they would stay in the pit
until dark.

Then Vahr Farg’s son leaped out
of Ihe pit and began running across
the snow. He had his pack, and his
rifle; he ran, zig-zag, almost di-
rectly toward where Raud was ly-
ing. Raud laughed, this time in real
amusement. The Southrons had
chased Vahr out, as a buck will
chase his does in front of him when
he thinks there is danger in front.
If Vahr wasn’t shot, it would be
safe for them to come out. If he
was, it would be no loss, and the
price of the Crown would only have
to be divided in two, rather than
three, shares. Vahr came to within

two hundred yards of Raud’s unseen
rifle, and then dropped his pack and
flung himself down behind it, cov-
ering the ridge vrith his rifle.

Minutes passed, and then the
Southron in yellow came out and
ran forward. He had the bearskin
bundle on his pack; he ran to where
Vahr lay, added his pack to Vahr’s,
and lay down behind it. Raud
chewed his underlip in vexation.
This wasn't the way he wanted it;
that fellow had a negation pistol,
and he was close enough to use it
effectively. And he was sheltered
behind the Crmvn; Raud was afraid
to shoot. He didn’t miss what he
shot at — often. But no man alive
could say that he never missed.

The other Southron, the one in
blue with the autoloading rifle,
came out and advanced slowly, his
weapon at the ready. Raud tensed
himself to jump, aimed carefully,
and waited. When the man in blue
was a hundred yards from the pit,
he shot him dead. The rifle was
still lifting from the recoil when
he sprang to his feet, turned, and
ran. Before he was twenty feet
away, the place where he had been
exploded; the force of the blast al-
most knocked him do%vn, and steam
blew past and ahead of him. Ig-
noring his pack and ice-staff, he
ran on, calling to Brave to follow.
The dog obeyed instantly; more
negatron-blasts were thundering
and blazing and steaming on the
crest of the ridge. He swerved left,
ran up another slope, and slid down

97

The Keeper

the declivity beyond into the ravine
on the other side. _

There he paused to eject the
empty, make sure that there was
no snow in the rifle bore, and re-
load. The blasting had stopped by
then ; after a moment, he heard the
voice of Vahr Farg’s son, and
guessed that the two surviving
thieves had advanced to the blasted
crest of the other ridge. They’d find
the pack, and his tracks and Brave’s.
He wondered whether they’d come
hunting for him, or turn around
and go the other way. He knew what
he'd do, imder the circumstances,
but he doubted if Vahr’s mind
would work that way. The South-
ron’s might; he wouldn’t want to be
caught between blaster-range and
rifle-range of Baud the Keeper
again.

“Come, Brave,” he whispered,
looking quickly around and then
starting to run.

Lay a trail down this ravine for
them to follow. Then get to the
top of the ridge beside it, double
back, and wait for them. Let them
pass, and shoot the Southron first.
By now, Vahr would have a nega-
tron pistol too, taken from the
body of the man in blue, but it
wasn’t a weapon he was accustomed
to, and he’d be more than a little
afraid of it.

The ravine ended against an up-
thrust face of ice, at right angles
to the ridge he had just crossed;
there was a V-shaped notch between
them. He turned into this; it would

be a good place to get to the
top . . ,

He found himself face to face,
at fifteen feet, with Vahr Farg’s
son and the Southron in yellow,
coming through from the otier side.
They had their packs, the Southron
had the bearskin bundle, and they
had drawn negatron pistols in their
hands.

Swinging up the rifle, he shot
the Southron m the chest, making
sure he hit him low enough to miss
the Crown. At the same dme, he
shouted :

"Catch, Braved

Brave never jumped for the deer
or wild-ox that had been shot; al-
ways for the one still on its feet. He
launched himself straight at the
throat of Vahr Farg’s son — and in-
to the muzzle of Vahr’s blaster. He
died in a blue-white flash.

Baud had reversed the heavy rifle
as Brave leaped; he threw it, butt-
on, like a seal-spear, into Vahr’s
face. As soon as it was out of his
fingers, he was jumping forward,
snatching out his knife. His left
hand found Vahr's right wrist, and
he knew that he was driving the
knife into Vahr’s body, over and
over, trying to keep the blaster
pointed away from him and away
from the body of the dead South-
ron. At last, the negatron-pistol fell
from Vahr’s fingers, and the arm
that had been trying to fend off
his knife relaxed.

He straightened and tried to
stand — he had been kneeling on

98

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Vahr’s body, he found — and reeled
giddily. He got to his feet and stum-
bled to the other body, kneeling be-
side it. He tried for a long time
before he was able to detach the
bearskin bundle from the dead
man's pack. Then he got the pack
open, and found dried venison. He
started to divide it, and realized
that there was no Brave with whom
to share it. He had just sent Brave
to his death.

Well, and so? Brave had been
the Keeper's dog. He had died for
the Crown, and that had been his
duty. If he could have saved the
Crown by giving his own life. Baud
would have died too. But he could
not — If Baud died the Crown was
lost.

The sky was darkening rapidly,
and the snow was whitening the
body in green. Moving slowly, he
started to make camp for the night.

It was still snowing when he
woke. He started to rise, wonder-
ing, at first, where Brave was, and
then he huddled back among the
robes — his own and the dead men's
— and tried to go to sleep again.
Finally, he got up and ate some of
his pemmican, gathered his gear
and broke camp. For a moment,
and only a moment, he stood look-
ing to the east, in the direction he
had come from. Then he turned
west and started across the snow
toward the edge of the Ice-Father.

The snow stopped before he
reached the edge, and the sun was

shining when he found a slanting
way down into the valley. Then,
out of the north, a black dot ap-
peared in the sky and grew larger,
until he saw that it was a Govern-
ment airboat — one of the kind used
by the men who measured the
growth of the Ice-Father. It came
curving in and down toward him,
and a window slid open and a man
put his head out.

"Want us to lift you down?” he
asked. “We’re going to Long Valley
Town. If that’s where you're going,
we can take you the whole way.”

"Yes. That’s where I’m going.”
He said it as though he were reveal-
ing, for the first time, some discov-
ery he had just made. 'Tor your
kindness and help, I thank you.”

In less time than a man could
walk two miles with a pack, they
were letting down in front of the
Government House in Long Valley
Town.

He had never been in the Gov-
ernment House before. The walls
were clear glass. The floors were
plastic, clean and white. Strips of
bright new lumicon ran around ev-
ery room at the tops of all the walls.
There were no fires, but the great
rooms were as warm as though it
were a midsummer afternoon.

Still carrying his pack and his
rifle. Baud went to a desk where
a Southron in a white shirt sat.

“Has Yorn Nazvik’s ship, the Is-
sa, been here lately?” he asked.

“About six days ago,” the South-
ron said, without looking up from

The Keeper 99

the papers on his desk. “She’s on a
trading voyage to the west now,
but Nazvik’s coming back here be-
fore he goes south. Be here in about
ten days.” He looked up. "You have
business with Nazvik?”

Baud shook his head. “Not with
Yom Nazvik, no. My business is
with the two Starfolk who are pas-
sengers with him. Dranigo and Sal-
vadro.”

The Southron looked displeased.
“Aren’t you getting just a little above
yourself, old man, calling the
Prince Salsavadran and the Lord
Dranigrastan by their familiar
names?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talk-
ing about. Those were the names
they gave me; I didn’t know they
had any others.”

The Southron started to laugh,
dien stopped.

"And if I may ask, what is your
name, and what business have you
with them?” he inquired.

Raud told him his name. "I have
something for them. Something they
want very badly. If I can find a
place to stay here, I will wait until
they return — ”

The Southron got to his feet.
"^Vait here for a moment, Keeper,”
he said. 'TU be back soon.”

He left the desk, going into an-
other room. After a while, he came
back. This time he was respectful.

“I was talking to the Lord Dra-
nigrastan — whom you know as Dra-
nigo — on the radio. He and the
Prince Salsavadran are lifting clear

of the hsa in their airboat and
coming back here to see you. They
should be here in about three hours.
If, in the meantime, you wish to
bathe and rest, I’ll find you a room.
And I suppose you’ll want some-
thing to eat, too . .

He was waiting at Ihe front of
the oflBce, looking out the glass wall,
when the airboat came in and
grounded, and Salvadro and Dra-
nigo jumped out and came hurry-
ing up the walk to the doorway.

“Well, here you are. Keeper,”
Dranigo greeted him, clasping his
hand. Then he saw the bearskin
btmdie under Raud's arm. “You
brought it with you? But didn’t you
believe that we were coming?”

“Are you going to let us have it?”
Salvadro was asking.

“Yes; I will sell it to you, for the
price you offered. I am not fit to be
Keeper any longer. I lost it. It was
stolen from me, the day after I saw
you, and I have only yesterday got-
ten it back. Both my dogs were
killed, too. I can no longer keep
it safe. Better that you take it with
you to Dremna, away from this
world where it was made. I have
thought, before, that this world and
I are both old and good for nothing
any more.”

“This world may be old, Keeper,”
Dranigo said, "but it is the Mother-
World, Terra, the world that sent
Man to the Stars. And you — when
you lost the Crown, you recovered
it again.”

100

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“The next time, I won’t be able
to. Too many people will know that
the Crown is wordi stealing, and the
next time, they’ll kill me first.”
“Well, we said we’d give you
twenty thousand trade-tokens for
it,” Sdvadro said. “We’ll have them
for you as soon as we can draw
them from the Government bank,
here. Or give you a check and let
you draw them as you want them.”
Raud didn’t understand that, and
Salvadro didn’t try to explain. “And
then we'll fly you home.”

He shook his head. "No, I have
no home. The place where you saw

me is Keeper's House, and I am not
the Keeper any more. I will stay
here and find a place to live, and
pay somebody to take care of

me . . .”

With twenty thousand trade-tok-
ens, he could do that. It would buy
a house in which he could live, and
he could find some woman who had
lost her man, who would do his
work for him. But he must be care-
ful of the money. Dig a crj-pt in
the corner of his house for it. He
wondered if he could find a pair of
good dogs and train them to guard
it for him . , .

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The Education of Tigress Macardle

by C. M. KORNBLUTH

Being a sobering reporf of perils encountered
by a young coup/e seeking a breeding permit. . , ,
A fo/e on no accounf recommenc/ed to those now
planning to undertake the pleasures of porenibood.

With the unanimity that had
always characterized his fans, as
soon as they were able to vote they
swept him into office as President
of the United States. Four years
later the 28th Amendment was rat-
ified, republican institutions yield-
ed gracefully to the usages of mon-
archy, and King Purvis I reigned
in the land.

Perhaps even then all would
have gone well if it had not been
for another major entertainment
personage, the insidious Dr. Fu
Manchu, that veritable personifica-
tion of die Yellow Peril, squatting
like some great evil spider in the
center of his web of intrigue. The
insidious doctor appeared to have
so much fun on his television series,
what with a lovely concubine to
paw him and a dwarf to throw
knives, that it quite turned die head
of Gerald Wang, a hitherto-peace-
able antique dealer of San Francis-
co. Gerald decided that he too

- 101

would become a veritable person-
ification of the Yellow Peril, and
that he too would squat like some
great evil spider in the center of a
web of intrigue, and that he would
really accomplish something. He
found it remarkably easy since no-
body believed in the Yellow Peril
any more. He grew a mandarin
mustache, took to uttering cryptic
quotations from the sages, and was
generally addressed as "doctor” by
the members of his organization,
though he made no attempt to prac-
tice medicine. His wife drew the
line at the concubine, but Gerald
had enough to keep him busy with
his personifj'ing and squatting.

His great coup occurred in 1978
when after patient years of squat-
ting and plotting one of his most
insidious ideas reached the atten-
tion of His Majesty via a recom-
mendation ridered onto the annual
population-resources report. The
recommendation was implemented

102

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

as the Parental Qualifications Pro-
gram, or P.Q.P., by royal edict.
“Ow rackon thet’U make um malind
they P’s and Q’s,” quipped His Maj-
esty, and ever)’body laughed heart-
ily — but none more heartily than
the insidious Dr. Wang, who was
present in disguise as Tuner of the
Royal Git-tar.

A typical PQP operation (at
least when judged typical by the
professor of Chronoscope History
Seminar 201 given by Columbia
University in 2756 A.D., who
ought to know) involved George
Macardle. . . .

George Macardle had a good deal
with his girl friend, Tigress Moone.
He dined her and bought her pret-
ties and had the freedom of the
bearskin rug in front of her wood-
burning fireplace. He had beaten
the game; he had achieved a de-
light^ combination of bachelor ir-
responsibility and marital gradfica-
don.

“George,” Tigress said thought-
fully one day ... so they got
married.

With prices what they were in
1998 she kept her job, of course —
at least until she again said thought-
fully: “George . . .”

She dien had too much dme on
her hands; it was absurd for a
healthy young woman to pretend
that taking care of a two-room city
apartment kept her occupied . . .
so she thoughtfully said, “George?”
and they moved to the suburbs.

George happened to be a rising
young editor in the Chil War Book-
of-the-Week Club.Hewon his spurs
when he got Mightier Than the
Sword: A Study of Pens and
Pencils in the Army of the
Potomac, 1863 — 1865 w’hipped
into shape for the printer. They
then assigned him to the infinitely
more difiBcult and delicate job of
handling uxiters. A temperamental
troll named Blount was his special
trial. Blount was writing a novel-
ized account of Corporal Piggott’s
Raid, a deservedly obscure episode
which got Corporal Piggott of the
104th New York (Provisional)
Heavy Artillery Regiment desened-
ly court-martialled in the summer
of '63. It was George’s responsibil-
ity to see that Blount novelized the
verdict of guilty into a triumphant
acquittal followed by an award of
the Medal of Honor, and Blount
was being unreasonable about it.

It was after a hard day of scream-
ing at Blount, and being screamed
back at, that George dragged his
carcass off the Long Island Rail
Road and into the family car. “Hi,
dear," he said to Mrs. Macardle,
erstwhile tigress-Diana, and off they
drove, and so far it seemed like the
waning of another ordinary day.
But in die car Mrs. Macardle said
thoughtfully: “George . . ."

She told him what was on her
mind, and he refrained from strik-
ing her in the face because they
were in rather tricky traffic and she
was driving.

103

The Education of Tigress Macardle

She wanted a child.

It was necessary to have a child,
she said. Inexorable logic dictated
it. For one thing, it was absurd for
just the two of them to live in a
great bam of a six-room house.

For another thing, she needed a
child to fulfill her womanhood. For
a third, the brains and beauty of
the Moone-Macardle strain should
not die out; it was dieir duty to
posterity.

CThe students in Columhia’s
Chronoscope History Seminar 201
retched as one man at the words.")

For a fourth, everybody was hav-
ing children.

George thought he had her there,
but no. Thestatementwas perfect-
ly correct if for "everybody” you
substituted "Mrs. Jacques Truro,”
their next-door neighbor.

By the time they reached their
great six-room bam of a place she
was consolidating her victory widi
a rapid dmmfire of simple declara-
tive sentences which ended with
"Don't you?” and "Won't we?” and
“Isn't it?” to which George, hanging
onto the ropes, groggily replied:
"Wee’ll see . . . well see . . .
well see . . .”

A wounded thing inside him was
soundlessly screaming: youth! joyl
freedom! gone beyond recall, slain
by wedlock, coffined by a mort-
gage, now to he entombed beneath
a reeking Everest of diapers!

"I believe I'd like a drink before
dinner,” he said. "Had quite a time
with Blount today,” he said as the

Martini curled quietly in his stom-
ach. He was pretending nothing
very bad had happened. "Kept talk-
ing about his integrity. Writersl
They’ll never learn . . . Tigress?
Are you with me?”

His wife noticed a slight, com-
plaining note in his voice, so she
threw herself on tlie floor, began
to kick and scream, went on to hold
her breath until her face turned
blue, and finished by letting George
know that she had abandoned her
Career to assuage his bachelor mis-
ery, moved out to this dreary waste-
land to satisfy his whim, and just
once in her life requested some in-
finitesimal consideration in return
for her ghastly drudgery and
scrimping.

George, who was a kind and gen-
tle person except with vrriters, dried
her tears and apologized for his
brutality. They would have a child,
he said contritely. "Though,” he
added, '1 hear there are some com-
plications about it these days.”

"For Motherhood,” said Mrs. Ma-
cardle, getting off the floor, "no
complications are too great.” She
stood profiled like a statue against
their picture window, with its view
of the picture window of the house
across the street.

The next day George asked
around at his office.

None of the younger men, mar-
ried since the P.Q.P. went into ef-
fect, seemed to have had children.

A few of them cheerily admitted

J04

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

they had not had children and were
not going to have children, for they
had volunteered for D-Bal shots,
thus doing away ivith a running
minor expense and, more impor-
tantly, ensuring a certain peace of
mind and unbroken continuity dur-
ing tender moments.

“Ugh,” thought George.

(The Columbia University ‘pro-
fessor explained to his students:
“It is clearly in George's interest to
go to the clinic for a painless, ef-
fective D-Bal shot and th-us resolve
his problem, but he does not go;
he shudders at the thought. We
canhot know what fear of amputa-
tion stemming from some early
traumatic experience thus prevents
him from action, but deep-rooted
psychological reasons explain his
behavior, we can be certam." The
class bent over the chronoscope.')

And some of George’s co-workers
slunk away and would not submit
to questioning. Young MacBimey,
normally open and incisive, mut-
tered vaguely and passed his hand
across his brow when George asked
him how one w'ent about having a
baby — red-tape-wise, that is.

It was Blount, come in for his
afternoon screaming match, who
spilled the vengeful beans. “You
and your wife just phone P.Q.P.
for an appointment,” he told George
with a straight face. “They’ll issue
you — even^^ing you need.”* George
in his innocence thanked him, and
Blount turned away and grinned
the twisted, sly grin of an author.

A glad female voice answered
the phone on behalf of the P.Q.P.
It assured George that he and Mrs.
Macardle need only drop in any
time at the Empire State Building
and they’d be w'ell on their way
to parenthood.

The next day Mr. and Mrs. Ma-
cardle dropped in at the Empire
State Building. A receptionist in
the lobby was buffing her nails un-
der a huge portrait of His Majesty.
A beautifully lettered sign dis-
played the words with w'hich His
Majesty had decreed tliat P.Q.P.
be enacted: “Ow Racken Theah’s
a Raht Smaht Ah-dee, Boys.”

"Where do we sign up, please?”
asked George.

The receptionist paw’ed uncer-
tainly through her desk. "I knoiv
there’s some kind of book,” she said
as she rummaged, but she did not
find it. “Well, it doesn’t matter.
They’ll give you eveiyihing you
need in Room 100."

‘Will I sign up diere?” asked
George nervously, conditioned by a
life-time of red tape and uncomfort-
able without it.

“No,” said the receptionist.

"But for the tests — ”

“There aren’t any tests."

“Then the interviews, the deep
probing of our physical and psy-
chological fitness for parendiood,
our heredity — ”

“No interviews.”

“But the evaluation of our finan-
cial and moral standing without
which no permission can be — "

105

The Education of Tigress Macardle

“No valuation. Just Room 100.”
She resumed buffing her nails.

In Room 100 a cheerful woman
took a Toddler out of a cabinet^
punched the non-reversible activat-
ing button between its dioulder-
blades, and handed it to Mrs. Ma-
cardle with a cheer)*: “It’s all yours,
madame. Return with it in three
months and depending on its con-
dition you will, or will not, be is-
sued a breeding permit. Simple,
isn’t it?”

“The little darling!" gurgled Mrs.
Macardle, looking down into the
Toddler's pretty face.

It spit in her eye, punched her
in the nose and sprang a leak.

“Gracious!” said the cheerful
woman. "Get it out of our nice clean
office, if you please.”

“How do you work it?” yelled
Mrs. Macardle, Juggling the Tod-
dler like a hot potato. “How do you
turn it off?”

"Oh, you can’t turn it off,” said
the woman. “And you’d better not
swing it like that. Rou^ handling
goes down on the tapes inside it
and we read them in three months
and now if you please, you’re get-
ting our nice office all wet — ”

She shepherded them out.

“Do something, George!” yelled
Mrs. Macardle. George took the
Toddler. It stopped leaking and be-
gan a ripsaw scream that made the
lighting fixtures tremble.

“Give the poor thing to me!” Mrs.
Macardle shouted. “You’re hurting
it holding it like that — ”

She took the Toddler back. It
stopped screaming and resumed
leaking.

It quieted down in die car. The
sudden thought seized them both —
too quiet? Their heads crashed to-
gedier as they bent simultaneously
over the glassy-eyed litde object. It
laughed delightedly and waved its
chubby fists.

“Clumsy oaf!” snapped Mrs. Ma-
cardle, rubbing her bead.

“Sorry, dear,” said George. “But
at least we must have got a good
mark out of it on the tapes. 1 sup-
pose it scores us good when it
laughs.”

Her eyts narrowed. 'Trobably,”
she said. “George, do you think If
you fell heavily on the side-
walk — ?”

“No,” said George convulsively.
Mrs. Macardle looked at him for a
moment and held her peace.

(“Note, young gentlemen,” said
the history professor, ‘‘the turning
point, the seed of rebellion." They
noted.')

The Macardles and the Toddler
drove off down Sunrise Highway,
which was lined with filling sta-
tions; since their ’98 Landcruiser
made only two miles to the gallon,
it was not long before lhe>* had to
stop at one.

The Toddler began its ripsaw
shriek when they stopped. A hol-
low-eyed attendant shambled over
and peered into the car. “Just get
it?" he asked apathetically.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Macardle, fran-

106

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

tically trj'ing to joggle the Toddler,
to change it, to burp it, to do any-
thing that would end the soul-split-
ting noise.

“Half pint of white 90-octane
gas is what it needs,” mumbled
the attendant. “Few drops of SAE
40 oil. Got one myself. Two weeks
to go. I’ll never make it. TU crack.
rU — rU . . .” He tottered offand
returned with the gasoline in a
nursing bottle, the oil in an eye-
dropper.

The Toddler grabbed the bottle
and began to gulp the ,gas down
contentedly.

“Where do you put the oil?"
asked Mrs. Macardle.

He showed her.

“Oh,” she said.

‘Till her up,” said George. "The
car, I mean. I . . . ah . . . I’m
going to wash my hands, dear.”

He cornered the attendant by the
cash register. "Look,” he said.
**\\hat, ah, would happen if you
just let it run out of gas? The Tod-
dler, I mean?”

The man looked at him and put
a compassionate hand on his shoul-
der. "It w'ould scream, buddy,” he
said. 'The main motors run off an
atomic battery. The gas engine's
just for a sideshow and for having
breakdowns.”

“Breakdowns? Oh, my God!
How do you fix a breakdown?”

“The best way you can,” the man
said. “And buddy, when you burp
it, watch out for the fumes. I’ve
seen some ugly explosions . . .”

They stopped at five more filling
stations along the way when the
Toddler wanted gas. !

“It’ll be better-behaved when it’s
used to the house,” said Mrs. Ma- ]
cardie apprehensively as she car-
ried it over the threshold.

“Put it down and let’s see what ]
happens,” said George.

The Toddler toddled happily to
the coffee table, picked up a large
bronze ashtray, moved to the picture
window and heaved the ashtray j

through it. It gurgled happily at
the crash.

“You little — I” George roared,
making for the Toddler with his
hands clawed before him.

“George!” Mrs. Macardle
screamed, snatching ffie Toddler
away. “It’s only a machine!”

The machine began to shriek.

They tried gasoline, oil, wiping
with a clean lint-free rag, putting
it down, picking it up and finally
banging their heads together. It
continued to scream until it was
ready to stop screaming, and then
it stopped and gave them an en-
chanting grin.

‘Time to put it to — away for the
night?” asked George.

It permitted itself to be put away
for the night.

From his pillow George said la-
ter: “Think we did pretty well to-
day. Three months? Pah!”

Mrs. Macardle said: “You were
wonderful, George.”

He knew that tone. “My Tigress,”
he said.

107

The Education of Tigress Macardle

Ten minutes later, at the most
inconvenient time in the world, bar
none, the Toddler began its ripsaw
screaming.

Cursing, they went to find out
what it wanted. They found out.
What it wanted was to laugh in
their faces.

(The professor explained: “In'
dubitably, sadism is at work here,
hut harnessed in the service of hu-
manity. Better a brutal and concen-
trated attack such as we have been
witnessing than long-drawn-out tor-
ments." The class nodded respect-
fully.')

Mr. and Mrs. Macardle man-
aged to pull themselves together for
another try, and there was an exact
repeat. Apparently the Toddler
^nsed something in the air.

“Three months,” said George,
with haunted eyes.

'Tou’U live,” his wife snapped.

“May I ask just what kind of a
crack Aat was supposed to be?”

“If the shoe fits, my good man

So a fine sex quarrel ended the
day.

Within a week the house looked
as if it had been liberated by a
Mississippi National Guard divi-
sion. George had lost ten pounds
because he couldn’t digest anything,
not even if he seasoned his food
with powdered Equanil instead of
salt. Mrs. Macardle had gained fif-
teen pounds by nervous gobbling
during the moments when die Tod-
dler left her unoccupied. The pic-

ture window was boarded up. On
George’s salary, and with glaziers’
wages what they were, he couldn’t
have it replaced twice a day.

Not unnaturally, he met his
next-door neighbor, Jacques Truro,
in a bar.

Truro was rye and soda, he was
dry martini; otherwise they were
identical.

“It’s the little whimper first that
gets me, when you know die big
screaming’s going to come next. I
could jump out of my skin when I
hear that whimper.”

“Yeah. The waiting. Sometimes
one second, sometimes five. I
count.”

“I forced myself to stop. I was
throwing up.”

“Yeah. Me too. And nervous di-
arrhea?”

“All the time. Between me and
that goddam thing the house is
awash. Cheers.”

They drank and shared hollow
laughter.

“My stamp collection. Down the
toilet.”

“My fishing pole. Three clean
breaks and peanut butter in the
reel.”

“One thing I’U never understand,
Truro. What decided you two to
have a baby?”

“Wait a minute, Macardle,” Tru-
ro said. “Marguerite told me that
you were going to have one, so she
had to have one — ”

They looked at each other in
shared horror.

108

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

"Suckered,” said Macardle in an
awed voice.

‘'Women/* breathed Truro.

They drank a grim toast and
went home.

"It’s beginning to talk/* Mrs. Ma-
cardle said listlessly, sprawled in a
chair, her hand in a box of choco-
lates. "Called me ‘old pig-face’ this
afternoon." She did look somewhat
piggish with fifteen superfluous
pounds.

George put down his briefcase.
It was loaded with work from the
office which these days he was un-
able to get through in time. He had
finally got the revised court-martial
scene from Blount, and would now
have to transmute it into readable
prose, emending the author’s stupid
lapses of logic, illiterate blimders
of language and raspingly ugly
style.

"rU wash up/’ he said.

"Don’t use the toilet. Stopped up
again.”

"Bad?”

"He said he’d come back in the
morning with an eight-man crew.
Something about jacking up a cor-
ner of the house."

The Toddler toddled in with a
bottle of bleach, made for the brief-
case, and emptied the bleach into
it before the exhausted man or
woman could comprehend what
was going on, let alone do anything
about it.

George incredulously spread the
pages of the court-martial scene on
the gouged and battered coffee ta-

ble. His eyes bulged as he watched
the thousands of typed words van-
ishing before his eyes, turning pale
and then white as the paper.

Blount kept no carbons. Keeping
carbons called for a minimal quan-
tity of prudence and brains, but
Blount was an author and so he
kept no carbons. The court-martial
scene, the product of six months’
screaming, was gone.

The Toddler laughed gleefully.

George clenched his fists, closed
his eyes and tried to ignore the roar-
ing in his ears.

The Toddler began a whining
chant:

"Dfl-dy’s an oM-thor!

D/z-dy’s an aw-thor!"

“That did itr George shrieked.
He stalked to the door and flung it
open.

"Where are you going?" Mrs. Ma-
cardle quavered.

"To the first doctor’s office I
find,” said her husband in sudden
icy calm. "There I will request a
shot of D-Bal. ^Vhen I have had
a D-Bal shot, a breeding permit
will be of no use whatever to us.
Since a breeding permit will be use-
less, we need not qualif)' for one by
being tortured for another eleven
weeks by that obscene little mon-
ster, which we shall return to
P.Q.P. in die morning. And unless
it behaves, it will be returned in a
basket, for them to reassemble at
their leisure.”

"I’m so glad,” his wife sighed.

109

Tke Education of Tigress Macardle

The Toddler said: “May I con-
gratulate you on your decision. By
voluntarily surrendering your right
to breed, you are patriotically re-
ducing the population pressure, a
problem of great concern to His
Majesty. We of the P.Q.P. wish to
point out that your decision has
been arrived at not through coercion
but through education; i.e., by pre-
senting you in the form of a Tod-
dler with some of the arguments
against parenthood.”

“I didn’t know you could talk
that well,” marveled Mrs. Macardle.

The Toddler said modestly: “I’ve
been with the P.Q.P. from the very
beginning, ma’am; I’m a veteran
Toddler operator, I may say, work-
ing out of Room 4567 of the Em-
pire State. And the improved mod-
el I’m working through has reduced
the breakdown time an average thir-
ty-five percent. I foresee a time,
ma’am, when we experienced oper-
ators and ever-improved models
will do the job in one day!”

The voice was fanatical.

Mrs. Macardle turned around in
sudden vague apprehension. George
had left for his D-Bal shot.

C'And thus we see/' said the yro-
fessor to the seminar, “the genius
of the insidious Dr. Wang in full
flower." He sna-pped off the chron-
oscope. “The first boatloads of Chi-
nese landed in California three gen-
erations — or should 1 say non-gen-
erations? — later, unopposed by the
scanty, elderly population." He
groomed his mandarin mustache
and looked out for a moment over
the great rice paddies of Central
Park. It spring; blue-clad wom-
en stooped patiently over the brown
water, and tke tender, bright-green
shoots were just beginning to ap-
pear.

(The seminar students bowed
and left for their next lecture, 'The
Hound Dog as Symbol of Juvenile
Aggression in Ancient American
Folk Song." It was all that remained
of the reign of King Purvis 2 .)

A Favor, Please

Recently, a number of readers have complained that their news-
dealers are either sold out, or do not carry VENTURE Science Fiaion.

If your dealer does not have it, you will be doing a real service
for us — for the dealer — and perhaps for yourself, if you will send
us his name and address. We will make sure that your dealer will be
adequately supplied.

Write to: Newsdealer Service, VENTURE Science Fiction.

527 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N. Y.

SEAT OF JUDGMENT

by LESTER DEL REY

Once every hundred years,

a living goddess was born on S6yon~

one who could work true miracles. But as Eli Judson
learned, the real miracle was the goddess herself^
she was almost too human ... too desirable

Night had fallen, and the hell that
had begun in the afternoon was
waning, but the city gleamed with
the angry red of dying fires, and
the crowds still fought back and
forth across the streets, howling in
sorrow and rage. In front of the
barracks beyond the Earth palace,
however, the fighting
seemed spent, and the
mob had thinned to a
scattering of huddled,
dazed figures.

Lorg, one of the
Ludh mercenaries,
broke from a side
street in an exhausted
attempt to ru?i. Two

artns hung useless, his clothing was
ripped to shreds, his bow was gone,
and his body was covered with
wounds; he no longer felt them —
his mind was filled only with the
need for a weapon.

He hesitated, listening for pur-
suit. Then, with a final staggering
run, he burst through the barracks
door and headed for the how
racks.

Light hit his eyes, jerking him to
a stop. They'd guessed his destina-
tion and beaten him here! There
were a dozen of them, headed by
the renegade Eors, whose bow
already pulled taut.

Vors' voice was sick as he stared
at his fellow Ludh, nodding to the

110

Ill

Seat of Judgment

others. "He's one of the butchers,"
he said heavily. The hcnvstring
stretched tighter.

"Renegade! Adommistl" Lorg
screamed the words, knowing it was
too late for pleas. ''When the men of
Earth catch you — !"

"Earth!" Pors spat the word out
harshly. "The men of Earth are
dead a hundred years, Lorg. Only
the Judsons are left. They’ll never
act until they have to — and then
too late. Pray to your own false
gods, Lorg, not to Earth!"

Lorg leaped, hut the arrow was
already in fiigjtt. It was a sliver, a
wand, a lance — then a stake driving
toward him.

Pors dropped the bow and leaned
against the wall, sobbing harshly —
but not for the death of Lorg.

Beyond the high walls of the
spaceport, Sayon seemed almost un-
changed by the thirty years since
Eli Judson had last seen the planet.
Time might have ceased to exist
here, though it had dealt sternly
enough with him. The grayish blue
uniform of the Colonial Service
hung slackly on his sinewy, old
man’s body. The black was almost
gone from his hair, bitter lines had
been etched across his hollow-
cheeked face, and his sight was al-
most useless without his glasses. In
a few more years, it would be too
late for even the geriatric treat-
ments back on Earth to help him.

He grunted uncomfortably as the
llama-like beast he rode jolted up

the rough road to the top of a hill.
At the crest, he held up his hand
to stop his escort. “It looks peaceful
enough,” he observed.

“So does a fusion bomb imtil it
goes off,” Dupont answered in his
irritatingly high-pitched voice. His
stout face was sweating profusely,
and he made nervously futile ges-
tures with a handkerchief.

Earth must be hard-up to pick
such a man for planet administra-
tor, even on a backwater world like
this, Judson thought. He shrugged
and reached for his binoculars to
survey the valley below.

The air was crystal clear in the
aftermath of one of the seasonal
storms. Groves of dense-fruited faya
berries, and pastures dotted with
flocks of green-w'ooled th^om, cov-
ered the hillsides. Downtrail, a car-
avan was meandering upwards,
loaded with precious spices, per-
fumes and uranium ore for the
space trade. The harbor to the east
was crowded with galleys and gaudy
with their multicolored sails.

KaJva, the city beyond the quays,
had grown until its maze of low
buildings and twisting little streets
now stretched far beyond the old
walls. Judson knew that most of
the city was filled with squalor and
filth, but distance softened that.
The yellow brick and the dark tile
roofs seemed to sparkle serenely in
the afternoon sunlight.

Over the center of the city, the
great Temple reared its seven mar-
ble tiers, capped by a flattened

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

112

dome of burnished gold plate. Jud-
son shifted to higher magnification
to study the square in front of the
building. The crowds seemed thick
there, but hardly anyone was going
up the great steps to worship. Widi
the festival of Mes^ due to begin
tomorrow evening, that was a jar-
ringly false note.

Dupont coughed nervously.
"We’d better get going. If there’s
any trouble . .

'Trom one Sayonese?” Judson
asked.

“Mohammet was only one man,
and a sick one,” Dupont points!
out. "Besides, these people have
many legends of human gods.”

“C^ddesses," Judson corrected
him . Then he grimaced as memo-
ries came pouring back. Meia was
thirty years in his past and should
have been forgotten. He stiffened
in the saddle and motioned the par-
ty on.

This time two of the bowmen of
Ludh moved in front. They were
the usual mercenaries used by
Earth in this section of the galaxy
— yellow, hairless apes with wolf-
like muzzles. As soldiers, they were
so good that one should have been
guard enough, instead of the six
Dupont had brought.

They came to the caravan he had
seen, drawn aside to let them pass.
The Sayonese were more nearly
human than most off-Earth races,
but still alien enough. The women’s
chests were flat under their brief
halters — naturally, since they were

marsupials — and their pouches
showed clearly above the slit skirts.
Their wrinkled skin and coarse hair
were both greenish gray, while their
ears and noses were disproportion-
ately large. With their squat, heavy
bodies they might have been trolls
from Earth’s mythology.

Even their customs and religions
resembled some Earth had once
known, though their Great Goddess
was a righteous, demanding Moth-
er-Principle. Earth had expected
easy conquest, counting on the na-
ture of Aeir legendary goddesses,
who were worshipped as incarna-
tions of the Great Goddess. One of
these goddesses, it was said, ap-
peared roughly every hundred
years, born to normal Sayonese par-
ents — and what made Earth opti-
mistic about conquest was that the
goddesses had all been practically
perfect images of human women.
One theory was that they adopted
human shape because of the rever-
ence that centuries ago had greeted
the first exploring Earthmen to land
on Sayon — more popular was the
belief that they were simply muta-
tions who happened to look human.

Whatever theory was correct,
Judson remembered, conquest had
not proved simple, though an ar-
rangement with the priestesses of
the Temple had finally worked out
fairly well — at least until now.

"Have you seen this Oe Athon
— this prophet you reported?” he
asked Dupont.

The man shook his head, reach-

Seat of Judgment

ing for his handkerchief again.
"Only films from a distance. He
came out of the desert a year ago
and stuck to the provinces, picking
up converts. It wasn’t until last
week he moved to Kalva for the
holidays. And you can’t believe all
the reports. They’re a mess of lies
about miracles.”

‘Tou haven’t picked him up for
questioning?”

'Tm not supposed to mess in lo-
cal religion. You know diatl” Du-
pont’s voice was petulant. “It’s up
to you and the high priestess, the
Fas Kaia. She’s the one who asked
for help from the Sector Governor.”

Judson sighed. WTien the Fas
Kaia asked for help, something had
to be done. As hi^ priestess of the
Temple, she was the ruler of the
planet. Theoretically, the Temple
decided only on reli^ous matters,
but religious laws co^'ered almost
every normal activity, and the Tem-
ple even conducted business of any
remotely “moral" nature, such as
brothels and money-lending. Of
course, in matters affecting Earth
the Temple was not all powerful.
But the Temple's cooperation was
rital to Earth’s control, and every
reasonable effort was made to keep
the Fas Kaia happy.

In this case, the request as for-
warded by Dupont had been for a
warehip and a company of Earth
guards. The Sector Governor had
a w’arship, but no adequate crew of
fighting men for it — the youth of
Earth was too busy enjoying the lux-

113

uries from a thousand worlds to
botijer controlling the planets now,
it seemed. So Eli Judson had been
sent instead, over his protests. As
a mere vice-governor, he was ex-
pendable.

They were entering Kalva now,
heading toward the Temple and the
Earth Administration palace be-
yond. Judson studied the crowds,
realizing time had brought changes.
Poverty was worse and the slaves
looked ill-fed. The Temple taxes
must be murderous. The streets
were jammed with people and more
pilgrims were arriving with even'
caravan, many wearing swords in
defiance of Mesea custom. The old
market was solid nith skin tents
and crude shelters, fillin g the air
with stench and clamor. One skin-
rotter could infect the whole area.

“Converts to Oe Athon, the
prophet,” Dupont commented, mak-
ing a mispronounced mockery of
the title. “It thins out beyond the
temple. There’ll be time for a bath
before the Fas Kaia reaches the pal-
ace, I guess.”

The huddled ranks of unwashed
Sdyonese made way for them re-
luctantly. Their greenish faces,
filled with a curious, expectant ec-
stasy, stared at the humans and
Ludb without seeming to see them.
They seemed peaceful enough —
but fanatics could seek peace one
minute and start a jehad the next.

Now the street swept around the
huge Temple, and the crowd grew
thinner, ^ead lay the palace, the

114

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Ludh barracks, and ugly, bar-
ren cemetery hill at the end of the
street. Judson glanced at the for-
bidding mound, then yanked out
his binoculars, cursing.

Near the top of the cemetery hill,
four thin posts carried the rotting
flesh of Sayonese bodies. Nearby,
another wretch was still alive, sit-
ting on the sharpened point of a
stake. It had been greased until his
straining hands couldn’t hold his
weight, and his feet rested on a
mound of sand that sifted away
with each writhing, tortured move-
ment. Slowly but steadily, his body
was sinking lower around the point.

At a time like this, the fools had
revived the Seat!

Judson swung out of the saddle
to the ground, shaking his head as
Dupont slowed. “Go on, damn it.
I’ll handle this my w'ay,” he shout-
ed. The huddles of Sdyonese part-
ed to let him through, until he was
past them, climbing up the steep
steps to the Temple.

The priestesses must have been
watching. There was a shout, and
two of them trotted down to meet
him. ‘Tell the Fas Kaia I’m here,”
he ordered.

“The Fas Kaia greets the Oe Eli,”
a heavy alto voice answered from
the top of the steps, speaking in
pure high Sayonese.

She was an old woman, so fat
that her greenish skin was stretched
almost free of wrinkles, and her
bloated body was loaded with jew-
els. But there was a firmness about

her as she waved the lesser priest-
esses away. She and Judson stud-
ied each other, and then she nod-
ded.

"You’re a strong man and a real-
ist, I think. Thank Her for that.”

“Realist enough to know you
can’t tax people to starvation and
hold them by torture,” he told her
sharply. He gestured toward the
hill. “Did you think I was too stu-
pid to see that?”

She sighed, turning one ear to-
ward the screams of the dying man
that came faintly over the noise
from the streets.

“I expected you to see it,” she
said quiedy. “These are bad times,
Eli — ^^so bad that those rogues
dared to try looting the Temple. I
may have lied in calling them fol-
lowers of Athon, the prophet out
of the desert, but their sentence
was legal. As for the tax — I get
what I can, but I don't stance my
people. They do that themselves.
Every fool on Sayon is in Kalva, to
see this Athon or watch what I do
to him. I’ve emptied my ow’n stores,
and there still isn’t enough food for
aU.”

Slowly the anger ran out of him.
Even under the codex Earth had
drafted, the Seat was approved for
anyone who profaned the Temple.
“My apologies, Kaia.”

“There was no offense, Eli,” she
told him, smiling quickly at the
ritual of names. “Now, if you’ll
consent, we can talk better in my
quarters.”

Seat of Judgment 115

In the little room behind die
great gold and jade statue of Her,
she waved the slaves aside and
served him mild faya wine and the
matchless Kalvan cheese. Then she
sank back gratefully onto her cush-
ions, setting up a tinkling of or-
naments.

“ ‘A wise man has many swords,’ ”
she quoted. “I am glad your Gov-
ernor sent you instead of the war-
ship the administrator requested —
which could have done no good.
Perhaps together you and I can
find a solution. . . . Eli, when
you were here before, how much
did you learn of Her incarnations
and their Power?”

He could feel the muscles of his
face tense, but he forced himself
to remain calm. “I met the current
goddess and saw what she could
do,” he answered.

"Meia — yes, I heard rumors,
though I was only serving in the
Temple brothel at the time. . . .
Well, as you probably know, all
have been girls, except the first,
who founded our religion in a series
of bloody holy wars. Some legends
make it seem that he was fertile, un-
like -the girls, and that they may
all have been seed from h^ loins.
But the people believe they are in-
carnations of the Great Goddess,
and they don’t disturb the Temple
too much. Athon, who claims the
same miraculous powers, does.”

“Yet you didn’t have him assas-
sinated when he first appeared?”
Judson asked.

“I tried,” she admitted. “More
than once. But he converted my as-
sassins and my spies. Then I tried
to persuade the administrator to
state officially that Athon was a hu-
man pretending to be Sayonese —
there was a missionary woman here
once who tried that.”

Judson fro^vned thoughtfully.
That plan would almost certainly
have wiped out Athon’s influence at
a stroke — the Sayonese regarded
any alien dabbling in their religion
as the ultimate abomination.

“I suppose Dupont took it under
advisement and warned you not to
touch the man until it could be
proved he wasn't human?” he
guessed. At her nod, he swore soft-
ly. Damn Dupont! The man could
have used his brains instead of the
rulebook once in his life. “Do you
think this Athon is human?”

She shrugged, glancing bitterly
at a framed copy of the Earth-
Sayon covenant. “Who knows what
a male incarnation would be like?
And how can I tell about Earthmen
when every one I have seen is dif-
ferent in size, shape — and even
color? \\TDatever he is, he preaches
both a Father-principle and a Moth-
er-principle! He wants the riches of
the Temple stripped away and di-
vided among everyone. He claims
all races are equal. Eli, consider
what that would do to Earth’s posi-
tion! Or think how impossible it
would be for you to deal viith
Sayon without tlie Temple — as the
Temple cannot do without Earth

16

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

now. Is Eartli strong enough in this
Sector today to hold Sayon against
a fanatic people — or to hold the
other worlds if this planet breaks
away?”

Abruptly, she stopped to study
him. Then a slow, hard smile lifted
the comers of her moutli. "I was
desperate enough to think of brib-
ing you, Eli, But a man who is
poor after forty years in your Serv-
ice must be honest. Still, you can at
least see what I chose for you.”

It lay on the bottom of the box,
gleaming iridescently — a necklace
of the almost mythical moonpearls.
On Earth, one of the pearls would
buy full geriatric treatments, and
ten would win the governorship of
almost any Sector he could name.
His hand shook, but he managed a
smile as he reached out to close the
lid.

Her own laugh sounded strained
as she put the box away. “Well, per-
haps someday the Great Goddess
wiU reward you for honesty. One
can always hope,” she said. Then
she heaved herself up and turned
to the doorway. “I've got a chariot
waiting to take you to the palace.”

A priestess was at the reins, and
as the chariot started off, Judson
was cursing to himself and at him-
self. Kaia had given him a little
information, shoved the entire re-
sponsibility on him, and — yes,
damn it — with those final words,
she’d managed to offer him the
moonpearls for his help! And all
within an hour of meeting him.

Yet on her own ground and in her
own specialty, she couldn’t handle
the problem she'd given him!

Abruptly, the chariot jerked to a
jarring halt and began backing. He
looked up. The street diey had been
about to enter — the main street
between palace and Temple —
was crammed with some kind of
procession. In the very center, how-
ever, there was a clear space where
one heavily robed figure moved by
itself.

He caught the priestess’ hands
as she tried to turn ihe team
around. “Wait. Is that Athon?”

She nodded, hate and sickness
on her face.

The binoculars did little good.
The light was already failing, and
the slow-moving figure seemed com-
pletely covered in a robe and hood.
Judson turned to glance at the
crowd, then focussed in shock on
two Ludh bowmen, marching in the
rear! They had no business here! If
even the Ludh could be converted
by this prophet . . .

A startled noise from the mob
broke the weird minor chant that
had been rising — a Sayonese man
was running toward the solitary
marching figure. In one arm he was
brandishing a sword weakly, shout-
ing as he ran. The flesh on his
body was covered with the great
scabs of brovm skin-rot, and he w’as
wasted to almost skeletal thinness.

The men nearest him started for-
ward. He staggered — but he still
had strength enough for his pur-

117

Seat of Judgment

pose. With a final yell, he raised
the sword and plunged it deep into
his own breast.

The robed figure stopped beside
the threshing body on the cobbled
street. A hand came out of the robe
to pluck the sword easily from the
wound, almost without touching it.
Then the hand withdrew, and
Athon bent over, as if chiding the
dying man. Finally he straightened.
The swordsman was quiet for a sec-
ond more. Then the body stirred,
sat up, sprang to its feet with a
wild cry of joy, and dashed back
into the crowd. There were no
brown scabs left on the emaciated
figure.

The chant rose to a wild frenzy
and the procession moved on. In
the center, the robed figure seemed
to shake its head sadly.

At Judson’s nod, the priestess got
the chariot turned and headed back
and around through twisted alleys
toward the Earth Administration
palace. Judson’s mind w^as churn-
ing. What he had just seen was so
completely beyond any healing pow-
er kno^vn to Earth that it could
only be called a miracle. If word
of such things got back to Earth,
diere’d be ships headed here in
droves — cuitists, hypochondriacs,
profiteers, curiosity seekers, truly
sick people — and among them
might well be some impressionable
members of the hereditary presi-
dent’s family! Fas Kara had been
more accurate than she knew when
she equated her danger with

Earth’s. In the imstable conditions
back there, just the knowledge that
such things could be would threaten
the whole system. The goddess
Meia had been a danger once;
Athon was doom!

At the palace, Dupont, his home-
ly wife, and the eight human as-
sistants who comprised all the
Earthmen in Kalva, had prepared a
vague attempt at a welcoming par-
ty; but they seemed relieved when
Judson pleaded extreme fatigue.
They’d probably turn it into a dope
binge now, from rumors of what
went on here, widi Dupont’s wife
being passed around from man to
man. But that was none of Judson’s
business. With the decreasing num-
ber of women who came away from
Eartli for any reason now, men
couldn’t be blamed for making the
most of whatever situation they
were in. And consorting with aliens
not only earned stiff penalties, but
also was almost invariably unat-
tractive and unsatisfying. Almost
invariably . . .

He dropped the thought and un-
packed in the apartment assigned
to him. From ^e bottom of his
small bag he drew a final piece —
a tissue copy of Selected Books of
the Testaments. He'd never read it,
though he’d considered doing so;
few men had read any part of the
old Bible since the long ago rise
of the cults. But this book had be-
come his luck piece.

By now the fatigue he had used
as an excuse was turning to real-

118

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

ity. He should call a slave to bathe
him and prepare him for bed, but
it was too much trouble. He made
another futile attempt to think
about his problems, then dropped
onto the bed. He’d undress in a
moment . . .

Priestesses, goddesses, prophets!
The last thing he had ever wanted
was to get mixed into another
Sdyonese religious mess. Once had
been bad enough — and yet . . .

Thirty years before he grew old,
a man could have plans for the fu-
ture, even on an outworld assign-
ment in the Colonial Service. Eli’s
hopes were based on a book he
was writing, dealing with the oddi-
ties in the ecological balance of a
world where marsupials had won
the race for domination. He was
spending his bi-annual vacation by
himself in the retreat of a village
a hundred miles north of Kalva,
using a building the Service had
owned but abandoned. The book
was nearly finished, too, and he’d
been practically assured publica-
tion. Then there’d be recognition,
promotion, a chance to return to
Earth; in time, there’d be a wife
to make up for ten years without
women; ihere’d be children.

It might have worked, except for
an unexpected storm that caught
him taking a walk to clear his
mind. The same storm found a
window he’d carelessly left open
and among other things, it ruined
his antibiotic kit and his radio.

That left only the native doctor,
who knew nothing about pneu-
monia. Eli passed into a delirium
with the unpleasant idea that he’d
wake up only in heaven — in which
he had no belief.

When he came to, he was less
sure. He felt rotten, and his sight
was cloudy, but there wa^ either an
angel or an Earth girl in the room,
talking Sayonese with an old man.
She wore native clothes, but no na-
tive had smooth white skin like
that — or provocative hips — or such
shoulders. Then as she turned, he
grunted in surprise. Damned few
Earth women looked that good with-
out makeup, either. He began to
consider the angel idea seriously.

She shook her head at him,
switching to English that had al-
most none of the lisped dentals
caused by Sayonese slotted palates.
“I’m only a goddess,” she told him.
“That is, I will be in another
month. You’re lucky I hadn’t gone
to Kalva yet, though — you were al-
most dead. And your cells are —
well, they’re different. I had a hard
time with you.” She bent closer,
long yellow hair falling over his
face. “Are you really an Earthman,
Eli?”

"I’m as much from Earth as you
are,” he mumbled, reaching for her.

She seemed puzzled at his efforts
to kiss her, but made no protests
until the old Sayonese uttered
something that sounded like teas-
ing. Then she disengaged herself,
nmning her hands over her chest.

119

Seat of fudgment

With a shock, he realized it was as
flat as his own.

"What’s a breasts. Uncle Kleon?’'
she asked.

"A breast, or two breasts — they
come in pairs,” the Sayonese told
her, grinning in amusement. “Read
his mind a little deeper and youll
find out quite a few things about
them, I’ll bet.” His English was as
easy and idiomatic as hers, though
less clearly pronounced.

For a moment, she stared down
at Eli. Then she turned away, and
she w'as giggling like a schoolgirl
as she left the room.

Kleon came over to drop hea\ily
onto the bed. “I’m not really her
uncle,” he said. Tm her teacher,
more or less, until she reaches the
Temple. I’m one of the few Sayo-
nese who were admitted to one of
our extension schools, before Earth
decided to keep us on our own
world and gave up any idea of
raising our living standard.”

"But what about her?” Eli asked.

The old man grinned affection-
ately. "She’s a lot more interesting
than I am. I’ll admit. She’s what
she says — a goddess. And a good
thing, too. You w'ere already in
deatli shock when she got here.
Haven't you ever heard of our vir-
gin goddesses?"

Eli had heard some stories, but
he hadn’t really believed them.
There had been a girl born rather
more than a century before w'ho
looked like an Earth woman and
who had some fantastic power to

heal tl^e sick and restore the
maimed. But not that human! He
looked outside to where the girl
was talking to a couple of Sayo-
nese. Then he frowned. In the sun-
light, there seemed to be an un-
dertone of green to her skin, and
there was a hint of a line across her
abdomen w'here a Sayonese girl
would have had a pouch. He shook
his head, suddenly aware again of
his weakness.

"That’s her father and mother
saving goodby to her again,” Kleon
said casually, indicating the two
Sayonese natives.

Eli fainted. When he next re-
gained consciousness, his body
seemed to be completely recovered,
though it could have been only a
couple of hours later. He drank
some of the hot cheese soup Kleon
offered him, and swung out of bed.

Outside, a wailing procession
was coming up the road. Some had
sldn-rot, others were crippled, a
few were blind. Then, as liiey
spotted Meia, their wails turned to
cries of delight. Apparently, from
what Eli could pick up of tiieir de-
graded dialect, they had arrived
late at her home village and been
told she’d gone off to Kalva for her
birthday. Finding her here w'as like
a reprieve from hell.

One by one, she took care of
them, sometimes talking to them,
sometimes laying on her hands. Eli
stood nearby and watched, trying
to spot the gimmick, and finally
gave up. Under her fingers, flesh

120

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

that had begun to corrode away
literally grew new skin. Bones knit.
Cataracts vanished from eyes. And
once, to get at a broken spine, she
casually levitated a native from the
ground, spun him over, and pressed
her hands to his back.

When they were finally all cared
for and spread out among the huts
of the village, she turned to Eli.
“It's harder than it looks,” she told
him. “But it feels good, too. Now,
tell me about Earth.”

He tried to satisfy her curiosity
. . . but sometimes he wasn't too
clear about what he was saying. It
wasn’t easy to get used to Ae idea
that a pretty, innocent young girl
could be half alien kangaroo, half
miracle-working semi-divine.

“I think we’ll stay here a few
days,” she decided abruptly. “I
want to know more about Earth
people. Maybe I can even go to
Earth and cure people.”

It was bad enough trying to go
to sleep while he knew she was
lying naked in the next room —
she'd insisted that he quarter Kle-
on and herself. But the picture of
her on Earth eventually blotted all
that out. The planet administrator
here was a neo-Blavatskyite of the
worst kind, and he’d love nothing
better than sponsoring the visit to
Earth of a real goddess, law or no
law. Once the senatorial families
discovered what she could do, all
hell would break loose. There’d be
at least a dozen kidnaping at-
tempts a month, and probably half

as many palace revolutions to con-
trol her. She’d be worse than the
Tarshian hypnotic lizard of the last
century. Besides, there’d be trouble
here at the idea of letting her go,
and she’d probably get killed be-
fore she really saw Earth.

He tried to argue her out of the
idea during the next few days,
sometimes with the casual help of
Kleon. But she was quite sure she
could handle anything, and she’d
made up her mind.

“Besides, nobody hurts a virgin
goddess,” she told him, as if that
had anything to do with his argu-
ments. It did serve to throw liim
off the subject, though.

“Why a virgin, anyhow?” he
asked. ‘Tou have a Great Goddess
you call the Mother-principle, but
she incarnates only in virgins. Isn’t
that contradictory? I suppose she'd
blast you asunder if you lost that
one virtue.”

“She’d leave me, because she's
the All-Mother, not the one-Mother.
Anyhow, I can’t really breed — I’m
not naturally fertile. Maybe, if it
were possible, I would be willing
to give up being a goddess for
children and if I loved a man —
but I'm not going to lose what I
have for nothing.”

Her words jerked his o^vn
thoughts back to level, with the
sharp realization that he’d begun
thinking of her as human again.
Damn it, she might look Uke a
woman, but even their basic cell
structure was different. It would

Seat of Judgment

be .easier to breed with an Earth
tree than to have children with her.
Not one of his chromosomes would
match with hers. And it was in
Judson’s morality that no matter
what other elements were involved,
sex was related to having children.
Anyhow, he knew nothing about
Sayonese anatomy — under her
skirt, she mi^t not be human at all.

She giggled. “Eli, if you want
me to take off my clothes, why don’t
you ask? I don’t mind, really. Then
you can see for yourself.”

“Go to heU!” he told her, and
stomped off, determined to pack
and leave at once. A man could
stand just so much. Innocent she
might be, but she knew she had
him going and she was enjoying
it. . . .

He was still there on the fifth
day, when he really should have
been beginning the trip back to
Kalva. Of course, they could have
travelled together, but that would
have been awkward. Instead of
packing, he was walking beside her
tow'ard one of his favorite loafing
spots on the side of a little hiU.

They came to a little dip in the
ground that cut off the wind and
he threw down a blanket and
dropped onto it. He hadn’t slept
well the night before, and he in-
tended to nap now. She’d brought
along the single book Kleon had
preser\'ed from his schooling — a
tissue edition of some of the books
of Earth’s old Bible. She and Kleon
must have memorized it, but they

121

still pored over it regularly. He
sprawled out and she snuggled
down beside him. Probably delib-
erately, she was closer than she had
to be. He could feel her breasts
move against him as she breathed.

He sat up with a yelp, staring
at her. Breasts? She’d been abso-
lutely fiat-chested when he first saw
her! But she wasn’t now — not by
a long ways.

“You wanted them, so I changed,”
she said contentedly. “It’s about
time you noticed! And I took away
the green in my skin you didn’t
like and made the line where I
should have a pouch disappear, too.
See?”

He saw, but at the moment he
was more fascinated by what was
there than by what wasn’t. If she
was using pddding, she was doing
a darned good job of it.

“They’re real,” she told him. “I
picked the ones in your min d you
liked best. You can feel, if you
don’t believe me. I don’t mind. After
all, it won’t mean anything to — to
me . . .”

But her breadi caught as sharply
as his, when his fingers slipped un-
der the halter. He felt her tremble,
and she was lifting and eager for his
hands.

For a minute, die leaned to him,
her lips parting and reaching for
his. Then abruptly she tore away,
staring at him with wide, startled
eyes. For the first time, he saw fear
on her face.

“No!" she whispered.

122

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

But it had to be — he saw it
clearly now. Once she gave herself
to him, she’d lose her dangerous
powers and be just another girl.
Maybe the change in her would be
only a loss of faith in herself, but
that didn’t matter. It was his solu-
tion. Earth would never hear of her,
and . . . and it had been ten
years since he’d held a girl!

He started toward her. Her face
paled. Something seemed to ex-
plode in his head, and he staggered,
missed his footing and fell.

"No,” she repeated. “Not now.
Not yet. I have to think.”

This time he waited, knowing
he could do nothing to force a crea-
ture with the powers of a goddess.
.The pressures in him rose and
fought for expression, but he could
only lie and wait. And in the end,
it was she who came to him, slowly
pulling the halter off as she moved
toward him. He lay immobile until
she was almost touching him before
he' groped for her. She pulled closer,
straining against him.

“Show me in your mind again.
Show me everything,” she whis-
pered. "I have to be sure.”

His hands had found the slit in
her sldrt by then, and the buckle,
but he tried to follow her wishes
with his unclear, churning thoughts.
And suddenly she was completely
against him, with nothing between,
panting in his ear. "I’m sure. Eli,
I’m sure!”

The last Eli saw of Meia, she was
sleeping in complete exhaustion,

but with a touch of a smile on her
lips. She muttered something in a
weak voice, and he kissed her light-
ly, trying to keep his mind from
linking too loud.

It was dark before he reached
his house. He located his riding
beast, saddled it, and started to-
ward the building to collect his
manuscript. Then he saw Kleon
reading it, and gave up. He was in
no condition to face the questions
of the old man. He mounted quick-
ly, and headed for Kalva.

It was a long ride, and there
was time for more than enough
thought. Sometimes he gloated to
himself over the end of her power,
as if his victory proved that she
had never been more than he was.
Sometimes shame came over him,
either at the breaking of the Earth
taboo against aliens, or at what he
had done to her. And always there
were the feelings that he cursed
and ranted against, but which last-
ed longer than the others.

At the end of a year, when his
transfer was okayed, he spent all
his money to send her a box of
luxuries, using the village as her
address. When his transfer ship
was delayed, he began to fear she
might trace him back.

Instead, it was the aged Kleon
who came, and by then it didn’t
matter. Judson was inside the pas-
senger fence, getting final clear-
ance, and no natives were permit-
ted. Kleon tried to pass and was
turned back. Then, as he saw Eli,

Seat of Judgment

one thick arm swept forward, toss-
ing something over the fence.

It was the thin, worn little mis-
sion book Meia had been reading.
Shaking proved there was no note
between the pages, and nothing
was written inside the covers. He
stood holding it, trying to guess
what it meant, as Kleon left, and
the call came to board ship. . . .

Judson w'oke early, bothered by
the light streaming from the win-
dows on two sides of his apart-
ment. He groaned, still aching, and
fumbled about blindly until he
found his glasses. A slave must have
come in during the night to un-
dress him, and one entered now,
bringing his freshened clothes and
a welcome cup of coffee.

One wall of windows faced
north toward the hill, he saw. The
other opened on a rear garden. He
threw one of the windows open,
letting in fresh air and a babble of
childish voices. There were three
little boys, from six to eleven, play-
ing outside. From their looks, one
of them was Dupont’s — the others
weren’t. The man had been a fool
to permit the children, but envy
was thick in Judson as he watched
them.

He shut the window again, just
as Dupont himself came in. The
man looked sick and scared. ‘The
Fas Kaia has arrested Athon!” he
screamed, wasting no time on civil-
ities. “She’s holding trial on him
for profaning the Temple. After I

123

ordered her to leave him alone.
Come on, we’ve got to stop it!”

The rulebook was torn up, and
Dupont’s carefully built shelter was
gone. It was a shock to Judson too,
but no cause for panic.

"I countermanded your order,”
he said. He realized he was com-
mitting himself; in effect, if not in
intention, he was accepting Kaia’s
bribe. But there was no use trying
to undo what she had done — at
this point that w^ould only make
the over-all situation worse than it
was. “If you’re worried, Dupont,
maybe you’d better get your wife
and your boys to the ship.”

The sickness in the man abrupt-
ly washed out all the fear. But he
nodded at last. He shook himself,
pulling at some strength inside
him to put on a normal appearance,
then headed for the garden.

Judson hurried out to the street.
There was no chariot waiting, of
course; Fas Kaia obviously meant to
have a fait accompli when he
heard of it. He set out for the
Temple on foot, elbowing his way,
pushing and shouldering through
the crowd streaming toward the
Temple.

Inside the Temple, a reluctant
priestess led him to a great gold
and silver door and swung it open
for him. He could see Kaia at the
far end of the huge room, address-
ing a prisoner, in the hands of two
Ludh. How the Temple rated Ludh
guards would have to be e^lained
later.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

124

She looked up and motioned
him to her, standing up as he drew
near. "I couldn't get a chariot and
message to you through the hostile
crowd,” she lied easily in a low
voice. "So I went ahead, hoping
you’d hear. Here, IVe already
judged him an imposter of Earth
stock, and handed him over to the
Temple as a spy in Temple uni-
form — his robe really is an old
Temple one. I found rules about
jurisdiction over spies in an old
covenant of Earth and used them.”

"So you didn’t need me, after
all?” he asked bitterly. He could
admire her solution; with the de-
tail of the Temple uniform, it
might even be legal.

She shook her head, smiling
faintly. “I’m glad you’re here, Eli.
I’d rather not forge the papers.
Here, take the seat of judgment
and finish. You can certify to his
being human, too.”

He found himself seated in the
great chair, -with the papers in
front of him. They were in good
order and in English. Kaia was
thorough. But after her arrogant
assumption that she could control
him, if he had even a shred of
doubt about the man, she could go
whistle . . .

Abruptly, he saw the prisoner,
and the anticlimax took all the
stubbornness out of him. The man
w^as unimpressive and plain, with
mild blue eyes and carrotty-red
hair that could only come from
Earth.

There was even a hint of freckles
across the nose.

Reluctantly, Judson signed.
There was no doubt left, and noth-
ing else to do. One man couldn’t
count against whole worlds, any
more than Meia had counted against
Earth. But his hand shook as he
put the pen back.

“Hear the judgment,” Kaia called
immediately. 'Tor sacrilege within
the Temple, let the self-termed
Athon die on the pointed seat this
day. Take him away.”

The prisoner stood his ground,
and spoke in a rich, ringing voice
that seemed to fill the whole room.
“The world has judged and the
world is judged,” Athon pro-
nounced slowly. His eyes lingered
briefly on Judson, and his hand
came up in a strange gesture. Then
he shrugged and let the guards
move him away.

Judson felt his eyes smarting,
and his vision seemed to blur. He
reached for his glasses automati-
cally and began cleaning them.
Then shock hit him as he glanced
at the papers before him. Without
the glasses, the smallest text was
clearly visible. There had been a
final miracle, even inside the Tem-
ple.

Kaia was in front of him as he
stumbled to his feet, and there was
a package in her hands. "Sometimes
the Goddess is quick to reward,”
she chuckled. “Naturally, to refuse
Her gift is to profane Her name.
The Temple thanks you, too, Eli.”

Seat of Jiidgtnent

He took the package and thrust it
into his pocket, knowing it bound
him to her, and not caring at the
moment. ‘Tou are kind, Fas Kaia,”
he said formally. Then he headed
for the exit and toward the street.

But now the crowd was thicker,
pressing inward. As he came to the
steps, he found himself swallowed
by it, almost carried by it. It had
always been a faceless, abstract
crowd to him before — one with no
character or feeling. He hadn’t real-
ly realized that it could claw and
tear and smother with its solidity.
And he was too old to bull throu^
it.

Then another shock registered.
A few feet away, the face of Kleon
appeared, with the old eyes staring
straight toward him, before the
movement of the mob drove them
apart. The surprise seemed to clear
his mind, though. He lifted his
voice to a shout. “They are taking
him to the hill for the Seat. Kaia
has ordered the Seat for him!"

Other voices picked up the cry
and spread it. Now suddenly the
crowd began to turn, tr)’ing to get
away from the Temple and toward
the hiU. Judson was forced along
with them, but diey were moving
north, at least, toward the Earth
palace as well as the hill. He put
all his failing energies to the task
of working sideways, looking for a
chance to drop out before they
passed the palace.

Somehow, he made it. He had
no memory of it, nor of passing

125

out on his bed. But he came to,
filthy and tom, some time later.
There was no answer when he
yelled for a slave. He struggled
through a hasty bath and into one
of the standard Service uniforms
in the closet. Then the silence of
the house and the low rumble of
sound from the north finally regis-
tered, and he looked out.

Kalva was deserted now. The en-
tire populace was at the hill, where
Ludh guards with crossbows held
a small circle open at the top. In
the middle of that, there was a
quiet figure. Judson hoped diat the
tortured man was dead — from
here it was impossible to tell.

Athon had not saved himself.
The judgment was fulfilled.

And in the sk}% dark clouds
were piling up for one of the peri-
odic storms. Judson gazed at it, be-
ginning to worry again. This was
a primitive world, where omens
were all-important. A storm now
would indicate divine displeasure
— it would damn him and Kaia
more than all logic or law — more
than he could damn himself, per-
haps.

It was no time to linger.

He packed hastily, leaving the
book and the package for the last.
Then he ripped away the wrapping,
to study the necklace. The thirty
jewels on it were silvery white in
the shadows where he held them.
They meant a measure of youth
again — a wife to give him sons —
life on Earth or any planet he

126

VENTUBE SCIENCE FICTION

chose. Tliev offered eventhing he
wanted, e.\ccpt peace with himself.

But be had done only what had
to be. A man could never stand
idly by and see his world ruined,
even though the fools in it were
bent on riding downhill to perdi-
tion. At least in bis time. Earth
must retain her dominion.

Lightning flashed, a heavy bolt
that crashed down against the roof
of the Temple. It was natural, since
the gold dome was the highest point
in the city, but it would be more
food for the superstitious. The
thunder rolled out, drowning the
sound of the rain, and almost cov-
ering the footsteps behind him.

He looked around slowly, with
no surprise. 'It’s been a long time,
Kleon.”

“Too long, Eli,” the old voice
said. Amazingly, the man looked
no older than he had in the village,
but there was fatigue and pain in
every movement he made. ‘Tour
guards are gone, so I left my beasts
and came in.”

“Vengeance?” Judson asked.

The head shook slowly. "I leave
anger to others, Eli. Perhaps that is
why I have lived so long. Any-
how, vengeance for what? Meia
wanted you. And he — he knew it
had to be and brought it on himself.
I was only a teacher, not a disciple,
diough I loved the man. No, I fol-
lowed you to see you, and to take
back word of you to Meia. She
still lives in the village, and still
thinks of you.”

Judson shook his head. He'd
schooled himself to think of her as
being dead. But there Nvas nothing
he could say.

The storm seemed to be thin-
ning out, almost as quickly as it
had come. Kleon moved to the
windows, staring toward the hill.
There were tears in his eyes, but
his sigh was one of relief. “It is
finished,” he said.

He bowed his head and seemed
to be quoting. " ‘The people that
walked in darkness have seen a
great light: they that dwell in the
land of the shadow of death, upon
them hath the light shined. . . .
For every battle of the warrior is
with confused noise and garments
rolled in blood; but this shall be
widi burning and fuel of fires.’
I can't blame you for trying to stop
a battle that will not be confined
to this w'orld, Eli, though the
time for any man to take action
has passed — as even our priestess
seems to know, to her sorrow.”

“I stopped it once,” Judson pro-
tested harshly.

Kleon stared at'him, surprise on
his old face. He glanced at the
book on the table, and the surpri^
deepened. “I wondered, when you
didn't return. And yet . . . How
could you fail to get her message
and yet have the book all tliese
years, Eli?”

He moved to tlie thin volume,
pulling it open with a cord that
lay between the pages. Then he
hesitated, and picked up the binoc-

127

The Seat of Judgment

ulars instead. “Look, Eli. Look care-
fully, and beneath the surface!”

Judson moved uncertainly to the
window, unwilling but unable to
resist. He focused on the figure that
was still upright. Now, when it
should have been dulled in death,
the face had picked up a strange
strength and nobility, and it seemed
to stare at the sky, triumphant and
waiting. But it was drawn thin by
the hours of suffering, and there
was something about the features
— the nose, the shape of the
chin. . . .

“No!” It ripped out of Judson,
while the binoculars crashed to the
floor. "It’s impossible! Physically
impossible!”

Kleon shook his head. "Not to
one who had the Power, Eli. She
burned herself out in one effort —
but she succeeded. Here’s the mes-
sage I brought you from her, thirty
years ago.”

There was a dark circle around
one verse on the page, followed by
a thick, heavy exclamation point.
Below that, Meia’s signature was
scrawled in English script. Judson
bent over the book, focussing on
the ancient print within the circle.

Unto us a child is born, unto us
a S 071 is given.

His eyes wavered from the page
to the sight of the necklace that was
to have given him youth again, and
a wife — and a son; rejuvenation to
give him more years to realize what
he had done'- and to watch what
must become of the power his race
had won. Years to think — and
sometimes to wonder what a too-
human woman in a viUage on S^yon
might be thinking.

He took one last look up tlie hill,
dry-eyed and frozen. Then he
turned to follow Kleon out of the
empty palace, knowing he could
never leave Sdyon again. The two
men turned the corner outside to-
gether, climbed silently onto the
waiting beasts, and moved slowly
north, away from the distant space-
port and the hell that was begin-
ning already in tlie city.

Night was falling, and the city
began to gleam with the angry red
of growing fires, while the crowds
fought back and forth across the
streets, howling in sorrow and
rage . . .

Behind, the book lay open on the
table. Wind came in from the win-
dows, turning the pages slowly to
the last chapter of Isaiah. Then a
sudden gust blew the book closed.

FIGHT CANCER

Send a contribution today to
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The Harvesi

by

TOM

Soon they would come, the maddeningly

delicious fralings that filled the body and mind with a

GODWIN

smgtng,. ec5/o//c fire. If too many came, though,
there would be no more Harvests . . .

It was Harvest time.

The Sky People waited where the
last tenuous vestiges of atmosphere
met the nothing of outer space, in-
visible to the land creatures below
who had no way of perceiving life
forms that were almost pure energy.
Harthon and Ledri waited a little
apart from the others, soaring rest-
lessly on scintillating wings in the
light-stream from the sun.

For many days the Release Field
had enveloped the world below,
clouding and distorting the surface
of it to the perception of the Sky
People with the violence of its
psycho-persuasion bands. Now the
field was lifted, its work done/fhere
remained only the last little while
of waiting before the fralings came;
the intoxicating, maddeningly de-
licious fralings that filled the body
and mind with a singing, ecstatic
fire. . . .

“There are so many of us this
time,” Ledri said. “Do you think
there will be enough fralings?”

“Of course,” Harthon reassured

her. ‘There are more of ihetti, too,
and they’ve learned how to send us
as many as we need. There will be
more fralings this time than ever
before."

“The Harvest — ” Ledri's thought
was like a nostalgic sigh. "What fun
they are! Do you remember the last
one, Harthon? And the night we
danced down the moonbeams to
meet the fralings coming up, before
they had ever reached the nets of
the Gadierer?”

“I remember. And afterward we
followed the sun-stream out, so far
out that the world and the moon
were like a big and little star behind
us. And we sang . . .”

"And you. And then we were
hungry again and we let the sun-
stream carry us back to die feast
where the others were laugliing be-
cause someone had almost let a
fraling escape. Everyone was so
happy and the world and the stars
were so beautiful. The poor crea-
tures down below — ” a touch of
sadness came over her — “they don't

128

129

The Harvest

Imow and can never know what it’s
like . .

“It has to be that way,” Harthon
said. ‘Would you change it if you
could?”

“Oh, no! They have to stay there
and we have to watch over them.
But what if they should do some-
thing beyond our control, as the
Wise Ones say they may do some
day, and then there would be the
Last Harvest and never again any
fralings for us?”

“I know. But that may not hap-
pen for a long time. And this isn’t
the day for worrying, little shining
one — not when the feast begins so
soon.”

Their wings touched as they
turned in their soaring and looked
down upon the great curve of the
world below. The eastern sea was
blue and cloudless; tlie western con-
tinent going into the evening and
the huge mass of the eastern con-
tinent coming out of the night. The
turning of the world was visible as
they watched; the western rim of
the western continent creeping very
slowly into the extinction of the
horizon.

“Can the land people tell when
we're watching Aem like this?”
Ledri asked.

“No. They know we’re up here,
but that's all."

“How did they ever — "

A litde sun blazed into being on
the western continent, brighter than
the real sun. Others followed, swift-
ly; then they began to flare into life

on the eastern continent — two
fields of vivid flowers that bloomed
briefly and were gone. Where they
had l^en were tall, dark clouds that
rose higher still, swelling and
spreading, hiding the land beneath.

The Summoner gave the call that
was like the song of a trumpet and
the one who had been appointed
Gatherer poised his far-flung nets.

"They’re coming — the fralings!”
Ledri cried. “Look at them, Harth-
on. But there are so many — ” the
worry came back to her — “so many
that maybe this is the Last Han'cst,”
“There aren't that many,” Harth-
on said, and he laughed at her con-
cern. “Besides, will we care tonight?”
The quick darkness of her mood
vanished and she laughed with him.
‘Tonight we’ll dance down the
moonbeams again. And tomorrow
well follow the sun-stream out,
farther than ever before.”

The fralings drew swiftly closer,
hurrying like bright silver birds.

“They’re coming to us," Ledri
said. “They know that this is where
they must go. But how did the land
people ever learn of us?”

"Once, many centuries ago, a
fraling escaped the nets long enough
to go back for a little wMe. But
fralings and land people can’t com-
municate very well with one an-
other and the land people misun-
derstood most of what it tried to tell
them about us.”

The fralings struck the inrisible
nets and the Gatherer gave the com-
mand to draw them closed.

130

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“Let’s go — the others are already
starting.” Harthon said, and they
went with flashing wings toward the
nearer net.

"Do the land people have a name
for us?” Ledri asked.

"They call us ‘angels,* and diey
call the Gatherer ‘God.’ ”

The fralings, finally understand-

ing, were trying frantically to es-
cape and the terror of the small ones
was a fri^tened, pleading wail.

"And what do they call die
fralings?”

"They call them, their 'souls/
We’ll eat the small, yoimg ones first
— they’re the best and there will be
plenty for all.”

In fntnre issues of Venture S F . . .

At the moment of this writing, the lineup for die next issue of Venture
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# vl_4 (1957)

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